A Sense of Duty: A Former Navy SEAL Falls in Love and Begins a New Journey with his Private Consulting Company: Dark Horse Guardians (7 page)

She now had Ben in her private domain. The level of intimacy Lara was sharing with Ben had not been permitted for any other man, except Rusty McManus, Professor Harris, and Don Henderson. Lara felt herself relaxing as she gave Ben the little tour, "The owner hired me to decorate the entire house." She informed him. Ben loved the parlor and kitchen. Lastly, she brought him into her small but luxurious bedroom with a lovely stained glass window and original fireplace. Turning on the petite bedroom lamp, she sensed he was longing to lie down on her bed and get very comfortable. Lara watched as his eyes focused on the female items atop her vanity. He picked up her perfume bottle and playfully read the label aloud, "Blackberry and Vanilla Musk"…then smiled. His blues eyes were filled with mischief as they met Lara's, as if he'd just solved the mystery of the sphinx.

Lara moved toward the kitchen to retrieve a cold bottle of spring water for Ben and he followed. She opened the fridge, "Here you go. I think I'll have one, too." She dangled the bottle in her hand. As she turned to get another, she felt Ben's body brush against her back and she nervously flinched. He gently removed the clasp holding her hair and it fell loose. As she turned to face him, he slowly pulled her into his chest. He ran his hands through her loose hair. Lara relaxed into his arms as the water bottle slid to the floor. Ben buried his face in her thick hair. "You smell so….good." He was invading Lara's boundaries and usually she would slap a guy for less. Ironically, with Ben she did not withdraw. She was, however, becoming uncomfortable with the response she sensed in her own body. She did not want to recoil from his embrace. However, after a brief moment she gently pulled away.

Feeling the need to be honest with him, Lara looked into his blue eyes, "Ben, I'm sorry, but I have a strict rule about dating married men." she declared with an air of authority. Mentally, she had been making a checklist of questions about Ben. Where was he living? Why was he sniffing around her if he wasn't yet divorced? There were still questions to be answered and the unknown gave her pause in regards to a relationship with him. The truth was, she knew very little about him. Ben sat in the kitchen chair looking defeated. "I need to clarify something." he said earnestly. "Would you date me if I were
not
married?" He was putting her on the spot. Lara did not want to let him know that she was already attracted to him. She had to take control, no matter how difficult. After a pause, she answered, "Yes, Ben. I would date you if you were not married." He stood and took Lara's hand, "would you consider having meals with me dating?" Not wanting to stop seeing him, Lara replied, "Having meals or being together would be fine, but no intimacy." She tried to sound firm in her conviction. "One more question," Ben pressed her softly, "Would you consider kissing to be intimacy?" Lara thought for a long moment as Ben's beautiful blue eyes awaited her reply. She wanted to kiss him so much, her own desire made her fearful. So she made up a rule, "I think we shouldn't kiss, Ben, as it would most likely lead to more…intimate acts…possibly…" her voice trailed off as her face turned a light shade of pink. Feeling like he just took an arrow to the heart, Ben reluctantly promised to respect her wishes. But he couldn't see the harm in kissing her. He had a great deal of self-control. In the next breath he asked to see her again. "Tomorrow for breakfast?" he asked softly. "Yes." she smiled. She lifted his leather jacket off the hook for him in the entryway and said goodbye, thanking him for a wonderful dinner. She watched as he bounded down the stairs toward the motorcycle.

~ Ben ~

Ben turned his body slightly as he zipped his leather jacket and prepared to climb onto the motorcycle. He did not look directly at her parlor window; that would be too obvious. But he saw her watching. He instinctively knew the intimate moment in the kitchen excited Lara. She wanted his touch and he was certain she wanted to kiss him. Plus, it wasn't his style to back off when he wanted something. He turned from the bike and purposefully strode toward the porch. As he stood on the porch waiting, she stepped out and asked, "Forget something?" He embraced her with a power she never felt before. No words were spoken. Leaning her against the door, he touched his lips to hers. Slowly and deliberately, Ben kissed Lara for a long minute; a warm, sensual, French kiss. He didn't care if she slapped him. She did not resist. He stood back and lightly touched her long dark hair, gazed at her for a split second, and was gone. As he mounted the motorcycle, he headed straight for the campus gym to work off the heightened sense of desire he felt for her. Physical exhaustion always helped him sleep. But tonight the intimate kiss only served to bring to mind a much different work-out than the one he would burn through at the gym.

This time physical exertion did not take his mind off Lara. The campus gym was empty at the late hour. As he lifted weights, he wondered what Lara would think when she knew all there was to know about him? When alone, he wondered if any woman could love him. Benjamin Aiden Keegan was a counter-terrorism operative. His clients knew him simply as "chief" and transferred large amounts of money to his bank accounts in the Grand Cayman Islands and Switzerland, which he emptied little by little putting the cash into an underground waterproof safe in a secret bunker. Ten million was now piled in the safe, but he wanted much more before retiring from his chosen profession, if he ever did. He needed to have enough to provide Lara with everything she wanted, a home, family, a comfortable life, along with the sense of safety she so needed. Plus, he had many missions that he needed to complete.

As he arrived at his uncle's old colonial, he saw the kitchen light on. Harris was making a cup of tea before retiring for the night. As Ben came through the kitchen door, Harris asked, "How did it go?" Einstein did his happy bull dog dance to see him. Ben lovingly rubbed the dog's ears. Then he took a cup out of the cupboard to join Harris for tea. "She's perfect. You should be in the matchmaking business." Ben smiled. His uncle inquired, "Have you told her yet about Dark Horse and all that's involved?" Harris waited. There was a momentary silence between the two men. "I've only told her that I'm consulting for the government. I haven't given her the gory details just yet. I'm afraid it may drive her away. I need to be patient with her. I know she has been through a lot."

Ben was the last of seven children who had grown up in the suburbs of Boston. There were four girls and three boys in the big Irish Catholic Keegan Family. Having emigrated from Ireland, his father, Jonathan Keegan, was a well educated man. He started off as a stock broker, then later became a successful hedge fund manager. His mother, Catherine, half English and half Irish, made a full time career out of housekeeping and cooking for all seven children taking especially good care of her husband. There was a love between Jonathan and Catherine Keegan that Ben hoped to experience once in his lifetime. He observed how his mother doted on his father, catering to his every whim. She cooked his favorite foods, washed his shirts just the way he liked them, and there was a raging love affair between them, even now. His mother was an incredible beauty with soft blonde hair and brown eyes. Jonathan Keegan worshipped the ground his wife walked upon. He never forgot their anniversary and many times Ben walked into a room when they were embracing or kissing. After many years of marriage, they still kissed and held hands. Ben's father was a stern and serious businessman, but a loving supportive father. He taught Ben to go for what he wanted without holding back. He did not believe in doing anything half-way. If you wanted something, you went after it with all that was in you. Ben lived for his father's approval. He threw himself into any project with full force.

His enthusiastic approach worked for Ben as a young man in high school. He swam and ran long distance competitively and placed first consistently. He got into weight lifting and marathons in the last years of high school, gaining more muscle. Senior year, he met a personal trainer at the gym. That was the turning point for him. His trainer, a former marine, encouraged Ben to become a marine. Ben's parents were in their late thirties when they had him, thus the least attention was paid to him. His older siblings had carved out comfortable lives for themselves and most of them lived in New England, except for one. His older brother, Patrick, had moved to New York City and gained employment on Wall Street with a well known brokerage firm. Ben often spent time with Patrick in New York. When 9/11 happened, his brother Patrick perished, and Ben's path was clearly set before him. He felt a sense of duty.

After four years at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Ben knew he had found his calling. Once he arrived at boot camp in Great Lakes Illinois, he threw himself into the harsh environment. Ben understood that what he learned at basic training was an appetizer; Ben's entrée would be earning his trident as a Navy SEAL and he poured his heart and soul into that one singular goal.
His dream was being given the chance to put to use on the battlefield all that he had been taught. He was deployed with his SEAL platoon to Iraq, then Afghanistan: Tom, Elvis, Nate, Gus, Jake, Sam, and Javier, they were together for eight years. However, Sam and Javier never returned.

If there was one thing that Ben could change, it would be making the drunken decision to sleep with Sienna without using a condom. He met her at a club a few nights after completing basic training in Illinois. Sienna was trolling with a group of her modeling friends and she was all over him that night. He was a young man filled with too many beers and way too much testosterone, and he enjoyed Sienna's attention. She was a tall blonde runway model from Canada, three years older than him, with big brown eyes. She threw herself at him and he ended up in the sack with her that night. He saw Sienna three more times before he left for a trip to Ireland, then back to the states for the challenge of his life: Navy SEAL training. He had no way of knowing he had impregnated Sienna.

Becoming a Navy SEAL required extreme physical and mental agility and the sense of mind to make rapid decisions, while carrying out operations as part of a team under the most stressful conditions. If anyone asked him about SEAL training, Ben was at a loss for words to describe the horrendous, exhausting, demanding, sometimes torturous experience. He knew it would be the challenge of his life. For starters, the odds of even completing SEAL training were not high. One in four or 1,000 recruits make it to SEAL training. Of that, about 250 complete training.

Ben could not have chosen a higher bar. The mental acuity required was mind-boggling, but he threw himself into learning foreign languages, mathematics, science, mechanics, electronics, and physics. He was an avid speed reader with the ability to retain every detail. Ben was gifted with
the ability to recall images, sounds or objects in memory with great precision
. The physical training tests were beyond tough and challenging: push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, competitive 500-yard swims, and runs wearing boots and trousers, often with no rest periods. All of this was prior to the most intense boot camp in the world at Great Lakes, Illinois.

Once at boot camp, Ben had more physical endurance tests and mental challenges that pushed him to the breaking point. It was during the grueling second phase of BUD/S in Coronado California that he found out Sienna was pregnant. The news came in a phone call from her. He arranged for their marriage to take place in hospital over a weekend while he nursed a pulled muscle. The ceremony was brief and handled by a judge. He never had a honeymoon with Sienna because he was immediately dispatched back Coronado California to finish his basic underwater demolition training, BUD/S. This was a twenty-four week challenge that pushed him further into mental and physical hardness. He learned drown-proofing, swimming with his legs and hands bound. He survived surf torture, exposed to cold water for lengthy periods of time, ordered to do calisthenics and run miles in cold, wet clothing. And that was just the beginning. The physical conditioning ramped up to a seven-week course where he ran four miles in boots, swam two miles in the ocean, participated in obstacle courses and learned small boat skills.

The frosting on the cake was the fourth week, fondly referred to as "Hell Week", where Ben trained for five and a half days with four hours of sleep for the entire period. This was the ultimate test of any human being's physical and mental stamina. Although he fought hallucinations, Ben found that he could do much more than he ever thought possible. He also learned how critical it was to depend upon and work within a team. He moved into the land warfare phase for the next seven-weeks learning land navigation, patrol techniques, rappelling, marksmanship and military explosives. Parachute Jump School was exhilarating and took place at Tactical Air Operations in San Diego. He started with the basic static line jump and accelerated to free falls. Soon he found himself jumping out of moving aircraft with sixty pounds of combat equipment from 9,500 feet. Another twenty-six weeks of (SQT) SEAL Qualification Training ensued. Although most grueling, this was Ben's favorite phase as it included survival, evasion, resistance, escape school, and tactical air operations, where he honed his physical and mental abilities. The final leg was filled with tactics, techniques, and procedures. He was put though cold-weather survival, marine operations, advanced combat swimming, close-quarter combat and land-warfare training. Sienna had the baby as Ben finished BUD/S. He was unable to visit her as he spent the next twenty-six weeks in SQT (SEAL Qualification Training). He only saw his infant son, William, once before his first deployment.

Ben became part of a platoon and a valuable team member. When he finally earned the prestigious Navy SEAL Trident at graduation, he knew it would only be the beginning for him. He felt as if he had been trampled to death and literally brought back to life. Ben's area of expertise was asymmetrical land warfare, tactical non-conventional combat, with a specialty in explosive ordinates. He was also a skilled sniper. His time in theater was spent c
apturing high-value enemy targets in Iraq and Afghanistan. Setting up drone attacks, Ben also secretly worked in countries bordering the region. He collected high value target intelligence through special reconnaissance missions, as he scouted both enemy installations and enemy movement, setting up air support in battles.