Giới thiệu:
Một câu chuyện hài hước, thú vị nhưng không kém phần sâu sắc, ly kỳ của series lính SEAL.
Wesley Skelly nhìn thoáng qua thì có vẻ chỉ là một anh chàng lỗ mãng, nóng nảy, vô tư lự.
Nhưng Brittany Evans nhận ra con người bên trong anh.
Bí mật nào, nỗi đau nào của anh chàng Chuẩn úy SEAL đã hấp dẫn bà mẹ độc thân luôn nhiệt tình như lửa?
Tưởng rằng chỉ như bèo nước gặp nhau, cuối cùng họ lại tìm thấy ở người kia sự quan tâm, thấu hiểu, sự chấp nhận, cảm thông, sự hòa hợp và cả...tình yêu?
Chapter 1
Brittany Evans hated to be late. But parking had been a pain in the butt, and she'd spent way too much time trying to decide what to wear—as if it really mattered.
She surveyed the scattering of people standing around the college baseball stadium's hot dog stand as she came out the door that led from the locker rooms.
And there he was.
Standing under the overhang, out of the gently falling rain, watching the players on the ball field. Leaning against the wall with his back to her.
At least she thought it was him. They'd never really met—at least not for more than two and a half seconds. Brittany, this is whatever-his-naval-rank-was Wes Skelly. Wes, this is Melody Jones's sister, Britt.
Hey, how are you, nice to meet you, gotta go.
The man who might or might not be Wes Skelly glanced at his watch, glanced toward the main entrance of the stadium. His hair was longer and lighter than she remembered—of course, it was hard to remember much from only two and a half seconds of face time.
She could see his face better as he turned slightly. It was…a face. Not stunningly handsome like Mel's husband, Harlan "Cowboy" Jones. But not exactly Frankenstein's monster, either.
Wes wasn't smiling. In fact, he looked a little tense, a little angry. Hopefully not at her for being late. No, probably just for being. She'd heard a lot about Wes Skelly over the past few years. That is, assuming this was really Wes Skelly.
But he had to be. No one else in the place looked even remotely like a Navy SEAL.
This guy wasn't big, though—not like her brother-in-law or his good friend Senior Chief Harvard-the-Incredible-Hulk Becker—but there was something about him that seemed capable of anything and maybe a little dangerous.
He was dressed in civilian clothes—khaki pants with a dark jacket over a button-down shirt and tie. Poor man. From what Mel had told her about Wes, he would rather swim in shark-infested waters than get dressed up.
Of course, look at her. Wearing these stupid sandals with heels instead of her usual comfortable flats. She'd put on more than her usual amount of makeup, too.
But the plan was to meet at the ball game, and then go out to dinner someplace nicer than the local pizza joint.
Neither of them had counted on rain screwing up the first part of the plan.
Wes looked at his watch again and sighed.
And Brittany realized that his leaning against the wall was only feigned casualness. He was standing still, yet somehow he remained in motion—tapping his fingers or his foot, slightly shifting his weight, searching his pockets for something, checking his watch. He wasn't letting himself pace, but he wanted to.
Gee whiz, she wasn't that late.
Of course maybe her five-minute delay wasn't the problem. Maybe this man just never stood still. And wasn't that just what she needed—a date with a guy with Attention Deficit Disorder.
Silently cursing her sister, Brittany approached him, arranging her face into a smile. "You have that same 'Heavenly Father, save me from doing favors for friends and relatives' look in your eyes that I've got," she said. "Therefore you must be Wes Skelly."
He laughed, and it completely transformed his face, softening all the hard lines and making his blue eyes seem to twinkle.
Irish. Darnit, he was definitely at least part Irish.
"That makes you Brittany Evans," he said, holding out his hand. It was warm, his handshake firm. "Nice to finally meet you."
Nice hands. Nice smile. Nice steady, direct gaze. Nice guy—good liar, too. She liked him instantly, despite the potential ADD.
"Sorry I'm a few minutes late," she said. "I had to drive almost all the way to Arizona to find a parking space."
"Yeah, I've noticed that traffic really sucks here," he said as he studied her face, probably trying to figure out how she could possibly be related to gorgeous, delicately angelic-looking Melody Jones.
"We don't look very much alike," she told him. "My sister and I."
She'd surprised him with her directness, but he recovered quickly. "What, are you nuts? Your eyes are a little different—a different shade of blue. But other than that, you're a…a variation on the same lovely theme."
Oh, for crying out loud. What had her sister's husband told this guy? That she was a sure thing? Just liberally sling the woo, Skelly, and she'll be putty in your hands because she's lonely and pathetic and hasn't had a man in her bed—let alone a date—in close to a decade?
It was her own stupid fault for giving in to Melody's pressure. A blind date. What was she thinking?
Okay, she knew what she was thinking. Mel had asked her to go out with Wes Skelly as a favor. It was, she'd said in that baby sister manipulative manner of hers—the one that came with the big blue eyes, the one that had enabled her to twist Britt around her little finger for the past several decades—the only thing she wanted for her upcoming birthday. Pretty please with sugar on top…?
Britt should have cried foul and gotten her a Dave Matthews CD instead.
"Let's set some ground rules," Brittany told Wes now. "Rule number one—no crap, okay? No hyperbole, no B.S. Only pure honesty. My sister and your so-called friend Harlan Jones manipulated us to this particular level of hell, but now that we're here we're going to play by our own rules. Agreed?"
"Yeah," he said. "Sure, but—"
"I have no intention of sleeping with you," she informed him briskly. "I'm neither lonely nor pathetic. I know exactly what I look like, exactly who I am and I happen to be quite happy with myself, thank you very much. I'm here because I love my little sister, although right now I'm trying to imagine the most painfully horrific way to torture her for doing this to me—and to you."
He opened his mouth, but she wasn't done and she didn't let him speak.
"Now. I know my sister, and I know she was hoping we'd gaze into each other's eyes, fall hopelessly in love and get married before the year's end." She paused for a fraction of a second to look searchingly into his eyes. They were very pretty blue eyes, but her friend Julia had a Alaskan husky with pretty blue eyes, too. "Nope," she said. "Didn't happen for me. How about you?"
He laughed. "Sorry," he said. "But—"
"No need for excuses," she cut him off again. "People think alone means lonely. Have you noticed that?"
He didn't answer right away. Not until it was good and clear that she was finally finished and it was his turn to talk.
"Yeah," he said then. "And people who are together— people who are a couple—they're always trying to pair up all of their single friends. It's definitely obnoxious."
"Well meant," Britt agreed, "but completely annoying. I am sorry that you got roped into this."
"It's not that big a deal," he said. "I mean, I was coming to Los Angeles anyway. And how many times has Lieutenant Jones asked me to do him a favor? Maybe twice. How many times has he bailed out my butt? Too many to count. He's an excellent officer and a good friend, and if he wants me to have dinner with you, hey, I'm having dinner with you. He was right, by the way.",
Britt wasn't sure she liked either the gleam in his eye or that grin. She narrowed her own eyes. "About what?''
"I was having a little trouble there for a while, getting in a word edgewise."
She opened her mouth, and then closed it. Then opened it. "Well, heck, it's not exactly as if you're known throughout the SEAL teams as Mr. Taciturn."
Wes's grin widened. "That's what makes it all the more amazing. So what's rule number three?"
She blinked. "Rule three?" She didn't have three rules. There was just the one.
"One is no bull— Um. No bull," he said. "Two is no sex. That's fine 'cause that's not why I'm here. I'm not in a place where I'm ready to get involved with anyone on that permanent of a level, and besides, although you're very pretty—and that's not crap. I'm being honest here as per rule one—you're not my type."
"Your type." Oh, this was going to be good. "What or who exactly is your type?"
He opened his mouth, but she thumped him on the chest as the action on the field caught her eye. It was a very solid chest despite the fact that in her heels she was nearly as tall as he was.
"Hold that thought," she ordered. "Andy's at bat."
Wes fell obediently silent. She knew that he didn't have children, but he apparently understood the unspoken parental agreement about paying complete and total attention when one's kid was in the batter's box.
Of course, her kid was nineteen years old and a college freshman on a full baseball scholarship. Her kid was six feet three inches tall and two hundred and twenty pounds. Her kid had a batting average of .430, and a propensity for knocking the ball clear over the fence, and quite possibly into the next county.
But it had just started to rain harder.
Andy let the first ball go past him—a strike.
"How can he see in this?" Britt muttered. "He can't possibly see in this. Besides it's not supposed to rain in Southern California." That had been one of the perks of moving out here from Massachusetts.
The pitcher wound up, let go of the ball, and…tock. The sound of Andy's bat connecting with the ball was sharp and sweet and so much more vibrant than the little anemic click heard when watching baseball on TV. Brittany had never known anything like it until after she'd adopted Andy, until he'd started playing baseball with the same ferocity that he approached everything else in life.
"Yes!" The ball sailed over the fence and Andy jogged around the bases. Brittany alternately clapped and whistled piercingly, fingers between her teeth.
"Jones said your kid was pretty good."
"Pretty good my eye," Britt countered. "Andy's college baseball's Barry Bonds. That's his thirty-first home-run this year, I'll have you know."
"He being scouted?" Wes asked.
"Actually, he is," she told him. "Mostly because there's another kid on the team—Dustin Melero—who's been getting lots of attention. He's a pitcher—a real hotshot, you know? Scouts come to see him, but he's still pretty inconsistent. Kind of lacking in the maturity department, too. The scouts end up sticking around to take a look at Andy."
"You gonna let him play pro ball before he finishes college?"
"He's nineteen," Brittany replied. "I don't let him do anything. It's his life and his choice. He knows I'll support him whatever he decides to do."
"I wish you were my mom."
"I think you're a little too old even for me to adopt," she told him. Although Wes was definitely younger than she was, by at least five years. And maybe even more. What was her sister thinking?
"Andy was what? Twelve when you adopted him?" he asked.
"Thirteen." Irish. Melody was thinking that Wes was Irish, and that Brittany had a definite thing for a man with a twinkle in his eyes and a smile that could light his entire being. Mel was thinking about her own intense happiness with Harlan Jones, and about the fact that one night, years ago, Britt had had a little too much to drink and admitted to her sister that her biggest regret about her failed marriage to That-Jerk-Quentin was that she would have liked to have had a child—a biological child—of her own. That would teach her to be too heavy-handed when making strawberry daiquiris.
"That definitely qualifies you for sainthood," Wes said. "Adopting a thirteen-year-old juvie? Man."
"All he really needed was a stable home environment—"
"You're either crazy or Mother Teresa's sister."
"Oh, I'm not a saint. Believe me. I just… I fell in love with the kid. He's great." She tried to explain. "He grew up with no one. I mean, completely abandoned—physically by his father and emotionally by his mother. And then there he was, about to be shipped away again, to another foster home, and there I was, and…I wanted him to stay with me. We've had our tough moments, sure, but…"
The look in Wes's blue eyes—a kind of a thoughtful intensity, as best she could read it—was making her nervous. This man wasn't the happy-go-lucky second cousin to a leprechaun with ADD that she'd first thought him to be. He wasn't jittery, as she'd first thought, although standing still was clearly a challenge for him. No, he was more like a lightning bolt—crackling with barely harnessed excess energy. And while it was true he had a good sense of humor and a killer smile, there was a definite darkness to him. An edge. It made her like him even more.
Oh, danger! Danger, Will Robinson!
"You were going to tell me about your type," she reminded him. "And please don't tell me you go for the sweet young thing, or I'll have to hit you. Although, according to some of my patients, I'm both sweet and young. Of course they're pushing 95."
That got his smile back. "My type tends to go to a party and ends up dancing on tables. Preferably nearly naked."
Brittany snorted with laughter. "You win, I'm not your
type. And I should have known that. Melody has mentioned in the past that you were into the, uh, higher arts."
"I think she must've meant martial arts," he countered. The rain continued to pour from the sky, spraying them lightly with a fine mist whenever the wind blew. He didn't seem to notice or care. "Lt. Jones told me that you came to Los Angeles to go to school. To become a nurse."
"I am a nurse," she told him. "I'm taking classes to become a nurse practitioner."
"That's great," he said.
She smiled back at him. "Yes, it is, thank you."
"You know, maybe they set us up," he suggested, "because they know how often I need a nurse. Save me the emergency room fees when I need stitches."
"A fighter, huh?" Brittany shook her head. "I should have guessed. It's always the little guys who…" She stopped herself. Oh, dear. Men generally didn't like to hear themselves referred to as the little guy. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—''
"It's okay," he said easily, no evidence of the famous Skelly temper apparent. "Although I prefer short. Little implies… certain other things."
She had to laugh. "A, I wasn't thinking—not even for a fraction of a second—about your…certain other things, and B, even if I were, why should it matter when we've already established that our friendship isn't going to have anything to do with sex?"
"I was going with Rule One," he countered. "No crap, just pure honesty."
"Yeah, right. Men are idiots. Have you noticed?"
"Absolutely," he said, obviously as at ease with her as she was with him. It was remarkable, really, the way she felt as if she'd known him for years, as if she were completely in tune with his sense of humor. "And as long as it's established that we're well-hung idiots, we're okay with that." He peered toward the field. "I think they're calling the game."
They were. The rain wasn't letting up and the players were leaving the field.
"Is it temporary? Because I don't mind waiting," Wes added. "If Andy were my kid, I'd try to be at every home game. I mean, even if he wasn't Babe Ruth reborn, I'd want to, you know? You must be beyond proud of him."
How incredibly sweet. "I am."
"You want to wait inside?" he asked.
"I think there's some other event scheduled for the field for later this afternoon," Britt told him. "They don't have time for a rain delay—they'll have to reschedule the game, or call it or whatever they do in baseball. So, no. It's over. We don't have to wait."
"You hungry?" Wes asked. "We could have an early dinner."
"I'd like that," Britt said, and amazingly it was true. On her way over, she'd made a list of about twenty-five different plausible-sounding reasons why they should skip dinner, but now she mentally deleted them. "Do you mind if we go down to the locker room first? I want to give my car keys to Andy."
"Aha," Wes said. "I pass the you'll-get-into-my-car-with-me test. Good for me."
She led the way toward the building. "Even better, you passed the okay-I-will-go-out-to-dinner-with-you test."
He actually held the door for her. "Was that in jeopardy?"
"Blind dates and I are mortal enemies from way back," Britt told him. "You should consider the fact that I even agreed to meet you to be a huge testament to sisterly love."
"You passed my test, too," Wes said. "I only go to dinner with women who absolutely do not want to have sex with me. Oh, wait. Damn. Maybe that's been my problem all these years…"
She laughed, letting herself enjoy the twinkle in his eyes as he opened yet another door—the one to the stairwell— for her. "Sweetie, I knew I passed your test when you asked me to adopt you."
"And yet you turned me down," he countered. "What does that tell me?"
"That I'm too young to be your mother." Brittany led the way down the stairs, enjoying herself immensely. Who knew she'd like Wes Skelly this much? After Melody had called, setting up this date, she and Andy had jokingly referred to him as the load. He was her burden to bear for her sister's birthday. "You can be the kid brother I always wanted, though."
"Yeah, I don't know about that."
The hallway outside the locker rooms wasn't filled to capacity as it usually was after a game, with girlfriends and dorm-mates of the players crowded together. Today, only a very few bedraggled diehards were there. Brittany looked, but Andy's girlfriend, Danielle, wasn't among them. Which was just as well, since Andy had told her Dani hadn't been feeling well today. If she were coming down with something, standing in the rain would only make her worse.
"My track record with sisters isn't that good," Wes continued. "I tend to piss them off, after which they run off and marry my best friend."
"I heard about that." Britt stopped outside the home team's locker room door. It was slightly ajar. "Mel told me that Bobby Taylor just married your sister…Colleen, wasn't it?"
Wes leaned against the wall. "She tell you about the shouting that went down first?"
She glanced at him.
He swore softly. "Of course she did. I'm surprised the Associated Press didn't pick up the story."
"I'm sure it wasn't as bad as she—"
"No," he said. "It was. I was a jerk. I can't believe you agreed to meet me."
"Whatever you did, it wasn't a capital offense. My sister apparently forgives you."
Wes snorted. "Yeah, Melody, right. She's really harsh and unforgiving. She forgave me before Colleen did."
"It must be nice to know you have such good friends."
He nodded. "Yeah, you know, it really is."
He met her gaze, and there it was again. That darkness or sadness or whatever it was, lurking back there in his eyes. And Brittany knew. The outwardly upbeat Irishman would be fun to hang around with and was even adorable in his own loudly funny way. But it was this hidden part of him, this edge, that would, if she let it, make him irresistible.
He was, without a doubt, her type. But she wasn't his, thank you, God.
Eddie Sunamura, the third baseman, popped his head out of the locker room. His wife—June—was one of the soaking wet diehards. She lit up when she saw him, and he grinned back at her. They were only two years older than Andy, a thought that never failed to give Britt a jolt.
"Give me ten more minutes, Mrs. S.," he called to June, and Brittany couldn't keep from groaning.
"Eddie, you're unbelievably hokey," she said.
"Hey, Britt."
"Have you seen Andy?" she asked him.
He pointed down the hall before he vanished back into the locker room.
And there was Andy. At the end of the hallway. In the middle of what looked to be a very intense discussion with the team's star pitcher, Dustin Melero.
Andy was tall, but Dustin had an inch on him.
"Man, he grew," Wes said as he looked at Andy. "I met him about four years ago, and he was only…" He held his hand up to about his shoulder.
It was then, as they were gazing down the hallway at the two young men, that Andy dropped his mitt and shoved Dustin with a resounding crash against the wall of lockers.
Brittany had already taken three steps toward them, when Wes caught her arm. "Don't," he said. "Let me. If you can, just turn around and don't look."
Yeah, like hell…
Still, she managed not to follow as Wes hustled down the hall to where Andy and Dustin were nose to nose, ready to break both the school rules and each others' faces.
As she watched, Wes put himself directly between them. They were too far away for her to hear his words, but she could imagine them. "What's up, guys?" The two younger men towered over him, but Wes somehow seemed bigger.
Andy was glowering—the expression on his face a direct flashback to the street-smart thirteen-year-old he'd once been.
He just kept shaking his head as Wes talked. Finally, Dustin—who was laughing—spoke. Wes turned and gave the taller boy his full attention.
And then, all of a sudden, Wes had Dustin up against the lockers, and was talking to him with a great deal of intensity.
The new expression on Andy's face would have been humorous if Brittany hadn't been quite so worried at the amount of damage a full-grown Navy SEAL could inflict on a twenty-year-old idiot.
Dustin's sly smile had vanished, replaced with a drained-of-blood look of near panic.
Night Watch
Finally, unable to stand it another second, Brittany started toward them.
"…so much as look at her funny, I will come and find you, do you understand?" Wes was saying as she approached.
Dustin looked at her. Andy looked at her. But Wes didn't look away from Dustin. All that intensity aimed in one direction was alarming.
She wasn't sure what to do, what to say. "Everything okay?'' she said brightly.
"Do you understand?" Wes said again, to Dustin.
"Yes," he managed to squeak out.
"Good," Wes said and stepped back.
And Dustin was out of there.
"So," Brittany said to Andy. "This is Wes Skelly."
"Yeah," Andy said. "I think we're kind of past the introduction stage."
Chapter 2
Remarkably, Brittany Evans didn't jump down his throat.
Remarkably, she didn't immediately demand to know what on earth would possess him to physically threaten a kid more than a dozen years his junior. Forget about the fact that he did it in front of her impressionable teenaged son.
In fact, she didn't say anything about it at all.
Wes took that as a strong hint that he'd surely hear about it later.
But she'd merely talked about her sister's current pregnancy and friends they had in common as they drove to a Santa Monica cafe, not too far from the house Brittany shared with her kid.
The questions didn't come until they'd sat down to dinner, until they'd ordered and had started to eat.
"You surprised me back at the field house," Brittany introduced the topic. The table was lit by candlelight, and it made her seem warmly, lushly exotic in a way that her little sister would never look. Not in a million years.
Wes used to think that Melody was the prettier of the Evans sisters, and maybe according to conventional standards she was. Britt's face was slightly angular, her chin too pointed, her nose a little sharp. But catch her at the right moment, from the right angle, and she was breath-takingly beautiful.
Sex was not an option, he reminded himself. Yes, this woman was very attractive, but he wasn't interested. Remember? He definitely had to deal with all the emotional crap rattling around inside of his own head before he went and got naked with someone who would want a real relationship rather than a happy night or two of the horizontal cha-cha.
The odds of her wanting a night of casual sex with him were pretty low to start with. She so didn't seem to be the type. But even if he was wrong, those odds would slip down to slim-to-none after he told her the truth—that he couldn't give her more than a night or two because he was in love with someone else. No, not just someone else. Lana Quinn. The wife of one of his best friends—U.S. Navy SEAL and Chief Petty Officer Matthew Quinn, aka Wizard, aka the Mighty Quinn, aka that lying, cheating, unfaithful sack of dog crap.
Brittany Evans was sitting across the table from Wes, gazing at him with the kind of eyes he loved best on women. Warm eyes. Intelligent eyes. Eyes that told him she liked and respected him—and expected the same respect in return.
Lana had looked at him—at all of the SEALs—like that.
"Yeah," Wes said, since Brittany seemed to be waiting for some kind of response. "I kind of surprised myself back at the field house." He laughed, but she didn't join in.
She just watched him as she took a sip directly from her bottle of beer and he tried not to look at or even think about her mouth. The bottom line was that he liked her too much as a person to mess around with her as a woman, as hot as he found her. But if she were some random babe that he caught a glimpse of in a bar, he'd make a point to get closer, to see if maybe she might want some mutually superficial sex.
So, okay. He was man enough to admit it. If all things were equal, he'd throw Brittany Evans a bang. No doubt about it. Forget about Lana—because, face it, he had to. She was married, off-limits, verboten, taboo. He couldn't have her, so he took pleasure and comfort wherever he could find it. And he kept his heart well out of it.
But things here were definitely not equal. Not even close. Brittany was Lt. Jones's sister-in-law, which was probably even worse than if she were his sister. A sister wouldn't tell a brother about a night of hot sex with a near stranger. Well, probably not. But a sister just might tell a sister. Provided the two sisters were close. Which Brittany and Melody certainly were.
And word would definitely get back to Jones, which wouldn't be good.
No, this was not going to happen, not tonight, not ever. Which, on that very superficial and completely physical level, was a crying shame. He would have liked, very much, to see Brittany Evans naked.
"What did he say to you?" she asked, looking at him in that way she had—as if she was trying to see inside of his skull and read his mind. Good thing she couldn't. "Melero, I mean."
"That kid is a total…" Wes chose a more polite word. "Idiot."
Brittany smiled at him. "That's not what you were going to say."
"I'm working hard to keep it clean."
"I appreciate that."
God her smile was a killer. Wes forced himself to stop cataloging everything he wasn't going to do to her tonight. Enough self-torture already. He brought the conversation back on track. "Melero was just being a jerk. That's another good word for him—jerk."
"I've met him plenty of times before," she countered, narrowing her eyes slightly. "I'm well aware that he's capable of extreme jerkdom. But Andy knows that, too. What exactly did this guy say to Andy to piss him off like that?''
"It was about a girl," Wes said, unsure just how much to tell her.
"Dani?"
"Yeah, that's the one."
"She's Andy's girlfriend."
"I gathered that," he said.
"What did he say?" she persisted.
Wes paraphrased and summarized. He'd heard quite a bit this afternoon that he didn't want to repeat. It really was none of his business. "Melero told Andy that he'd, uh, you know, slept with her. Only, he put it a lot less delicately."
"I'm sure." Britt let out an exasperated laugh. "And Andy didn't just walk away? What a lunkhead. That girl is devoted to him—she thinks he makes the sun rise. She's a nice kid. A little low in the self-esteem department in my opinion, but, okay, she's still young. Maybe it'll come. I just hope…" She shook her head. "I'm not sure she's right for Andy and I'd really hate for her to get pregnant. I preach safe sex pretty much nonstop. He just rolls his eyes."
"Yeah, well, you can cross that off your list of things to worry about, at least for right now." Wes finished his beer before remembering he'd planned to make it last all through dinner. Crap. "Apparently Dani is all about taking it really slow." Ah, hell, why not just tell Brittany all of
it? It wasn't his business, but clearly this wasn't something Andy would bring up in a conversation with his mother. "She's a public virgin."
Brittany put down her fork. "Excuse me?''
"She's a virgin, and apparently she's not afraid to tell people—you know, make it public knowledge that she has no intention of messing around before she's good and ready."
"Well, you go girl! Good for her. I had no idea she had that much backbone."
"But now Melero's telling everyone he popped her cherry and—" Holy God, what was he saying? And to Lt. Jones's sister-in-law, no less. "Look, he was beyond crude, okay? When I heard what he'd said, I wanted to throw him up against the wall myself."
"You did."
She was looking at him so pointedly, so like the way Mrs. Bartlett, his third grade teacher had looked at him, he had to laugh. Man, he hadn't thought about Mrs. B. in years, God bless her. "Yeah," he said, "no. I didn't do that until he said the other thing."
"Which was…?" -
She wasn't going to like this. "I went into caveman mode," he apologized first. "I'm sorry I did that in front of your kid. That was the wrong message to send, but when that little cow turd started laughing and saying you were hot, and that you were next on his list…"
Brittany looked surprised for about half a second. Then she laughed. Her eyes actually sparkled. "Sweetie, that was just a schoolyard taunt. And your mother, too… You know? This boy is a total jerk and a bully, but he's not any kind of a real threat. And even if he was, I could take care of myself. Believe me."
"Yeah, I picked that up from you right away," Wes said. "And I told him that."
"After which you told him you were a Navy SEAL and if he so much as breathed in my direction, you were going to… what?"
Wes scratched his chin. "I may have mentioned something about my diving knife and his never having offspring."
She laughed again. Thank God. "That must've been when he looked like he was going to faint."
"How is everything?" The waiter was back, but the place was crowded and he didn't wait for an answer. He deftly removed the empty beer bottles from the table. "Another?"
"Yes, please." Brittany smiled up at the guy, and Wes said another short prayer of thanks that his knee-jerk treatment of Melero hadn't made her decide not to like him.
"Sir?"
"Yeah. Wait! Make it a cola."
"Very good, sir." The waiter vanished.
"I'm trying to cut back," Wes felt the need to explain as the warmth of her gaze was focused back on him. ' 'One beer a night. Two becomes six a little too easily these days, you know?"
"I appreciate it," Brittany said. "Especially since you're driving."
"Yeah, well, I'm a sloppy drunk. It's not pretty. It's definitely not a good way to make new friends." Why the hell was he telling her this? He didn't even talk with Bobby about his fears of becoming an alcoholic, and Bobby Taylor was his friend and swim buddy from way back. "This is a very interesting first date. We talk about your son's sex life and my potential drinking problem. Shouldn't we be talking about the weather? Or movies we just saw?"
"It finally stopped raining, thank goodness," Brittany said. "I just rented Ocean's Eleven and loved it. When did you quit smoking?"
Damn. "Two days ago. What'd I do? Pat my pocket, searching for my nonexistent pack?''
"Yup."
Crap. He resisted another urge to reach into his pocket. Not that he could've had a cigarette until later. This restaurant was smoke free.
"It must be driving you crazy," Brittany observed. "To stop smoking and cut back on your drinking all at the same time."
"Yeah, well, I've tried to quit before, I don't have a whole hell of a lot of faith in myself. I mean, the longest I've gone without a cigarette is six weeks."
"Have you tried the patch?"
"No," he admitted. "I know I probably should. I don't know, maybe the idea would appeal to me more if I could get Julia Roberts to glue it to my ass."
Brittany laughed. ' 'Maybe not smoking would appeal to you more if you had a girlfriend who told you that kissing you after you smoked was similar to licking an ashtray."
He forced a smile. "Yeah, well…" The woman he wanted to be his girlfriend was married. He didn't want to think about the one time he did kiss her. As easy as it was to talk to Brittany, he couldn't talk about Lana. This was a date, after all, not therapy.
Not that he'd managed to talk to the team shrink about Lana, either, though. The only talking he'd done was when he was completely skunked.
The waiter brought their drinks to the table and vanished again. Wes took a sip of his soda and tried to like it, tried not to wish it was another bottle of beer.
"My ex used to smoke," Brittany told him. "I tried everything to get him to quit, and finally drew a line. I told him that if he was going to smoke, he couldn't kiss me. And he said okay, if that's what I wanted."
Wes knew what was coming from the rueful edge to her smile.
"So he stopped kissing me," she told him.
The adjectives he used to describe the bastard were blistering—far worse than anything that had come out of Dustin Melero's mouth that afternoon, but she just laughed as he winced and apologized.
"It's all right," she said. "But cut him some slack. He wasn't entirely to blame. You know, he smoked when I married him, so it was pretty unfair of me to make those kinds of demands. Bottom line, sweetie, is that you've got to quit smoking because you want to quit smoking."
"Or at the very least, I've got to want Julia Roberts to glue the patch onto my—"
"Yes," she said, laughing. "That might do it."
' 'He was a fool,'' Wes told her, reaching across the table to take her hand. "Your ex."
The smile she gave him was stunning as she squeezed his fingers. "Thank you. I've always thought so, too."
Brittany took a sip of her coffee. "Melody told me you had leave for a week—"
"Two," Wes interjected.
"And that you were spending that time here in L.A. as a favor to a friend?''
"Yeah." Wes Skelly had a nervous tell. Even sitting at the table, he was constantly in motion, kind of like a living pinball. He was always fiddling with something on the table. His spoon. The saltshaker. The tablecloth. His soda straw. But when he got nervous—at least Britt thought it was nerves he was feeling—he stopped. Stopped moving. Stopped fiddling. He got very, very still.
He was doing it right now, but as he started to talk, he started stirring the ice in his soda. "I'm actually here as a favor to the wife of a good friend. Wizard." He glanced up at her, and she knew it was an act. He was working overtime to pretend to be casual.
"I don't know if your sister ever talked about him," he continued. "She may not know him. I don't know. He's with SEAL Team Six, and he's always out of the country, so… Very hard to find. So he's gone again, and his wife, Lana, she's, you know, very nice, very… We've been friends for years, too, and… Well, she was worried about her sister. Half sister, actually. Her father's second marriage, and… Anyway, Lana's half sister is Amber Tierney and—"
"Whoa." Britt held up her hand. "Wait a sec. Information overload. Your friend Wizard's wife Lana's—" Lana, who was very nice, ''—half sister is Amber Tierney from High Tide?"
"Yeah."
"Holy moly." With her heavy schedule at school and exhausting rotations in the hospital, Brittany didn't have time to keep up with the various TV and movie stars who made headlines in L.A. But Amber Tierney had been impossible to miss. She'd been TV's current It Girl ever since her sitcom, High Tide, had first aired last September. ' 'Her sister's worried…that she's making too much money…? That Tom Cruise wants to date her…? That—"
"She's being stalked," Wes finished for her.
Britt cringed. "Sorry. That is a problem. I shouldn't have tried to make it into a joke."
"I'm not sure how real the threat is," Wes told her.-"Lana says Amber's shrugging it off, says the guy's harmless, he wouldn't really hurt her. But see, Lana's a shrink, and some of this guy's patterns of behavior are freaking her out. It's a little too obsessive for her comfort level. So she called me, and… Well, here I am."
Lana, who was, you know, very nice calls and Wes jumps all the way to L.A.? Oh, Wes, please don't be having an affair with the wife of a friend. That was just too snarky and sleazy and downright unforgivable. You're a far better man than that.
Brittany chose her words carefully. "I know Navy SEALs are very good at what they do, but…isn't this a job for the L.A.P.D.?"
Wes finished his cheesecake, and he wiped his mouth on his napkin before answering. "Amber doesn't want to involve the police. It would be instantly all over the news—especially the tabloids. Like I said, she thinks this guy's harmless. So Lana asked me to come to L.A. and quietly check out Amber's security system, make sure it's good enough, make sure she's really safe."
"And the reason that what's-his-name—Wizard—can't do this is…?"
"He's out of the country. He's been gone for—I don't know—ten of the past twelve months."
"So Lana called you."
"Yeah." He wouldn't meet her eyes.
"You must be really good friends," Britt said. "I know you don't get a lot of vacation time, and to spend some of it here, doing this kind of favor…"
"Yeah, well…" Again, no eye contact.
"Although, of course, Amber Tierney… Sheesh. She's gorgeous. And currently single, according to the National Star. If you play your cards right…"
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