A Sexy SEAL Novella Anthology (20 page)

“Oh, crap,” he muttered, unfamiliar panic
gripping him. “Don’t do that. I’m sorry. I was just trying to be
honest. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t upset me.” Gwen shook her head
so fast her hair flew over her shoulders. “You made me happy.
Honest is good, and your answer was perfect.”

Relief flooding him, Noah risked pulling her
a little closer so their lower bodies were flush.

“Perfect?”

“Perfect,” she agreed, reaching up to cup
her hands over his cheeks. “If you’d promised me everything, or if
you’d offered to sacrifice your career to be with me, I’d have
known it wouldn’t—couldn’t—work between us. And we’ve been apart
too long to know if what we have is real or just sexual
attraction.”

“We do make great sex,” he pointed out,
pressing his hips a little tighter against hers and sliding his
hands around to rest on the full curve of her butt.

“And great sex,” she agreed with a quick
laugh. “But instead of all big promises, you offered us a
chance.”

“So that means yes?”

Her eyes brimming again, this time with more
love than he’d ever thought he’d deserve, Gwen nodded.

“That means yes.”

Noah’s smile was part delight, part relief.
Looked like honesty had worked where seduction hadn’t.

For years, he’d wondered if he’d done the
right thing. He knew that to be a good SEAL, he had to commit one
hundred percent. He’d thought that meant there was nothing left for
anything else. For any one else.

Now he knew better.

Now he knew he could have both.

His career, and his woman.

“I love you,” he said just before he took
her mouth. “I feel like I’ve loved you forever. Now I’m going to
find a way to make love with you forever.”

—The End—

“Dude, I can’t believe you ditched the Army
for the Navy. Why would you do that?”

“SEALs are Navy,” Ellison pointed out with
an amused look.

So
?

Army Specialist Rico Santiago wanted to toss
that out, but he knew it’d prove just how lame his argument was.
Ellison had left the army after his last tour, gone through
extensive training and busted his ass during Hell Week, then passed
BUD/S. A guy didn’t do that if he wasn’t planning to follow
through.

Especially not a guy like Ellison, whose
personal motto went something like See, Do, Win. The guy was
bulldog stubborn, setting his sights on a goal and busting his ass
until it was his.

Rico admired that. Hell, he was like that.
Which was probably why the two of them got along so well. They
thought alike, they fought alike. They’d served together for four
years, ever since Ellison transferred into Rico’s EOD unit at Ft.
Irwin, the two of them teamed up as Counter-IED specialists.

The guy was good. Innovated, dedicated and
focused. They worked well together. He hated that Ellison was
leaving the unit, hell, the branch. But did he have to move away,
too?

Rico wasn’t a sentimental man, but he wanted
to shout out,
what about friendship
? Was that done, too? Was
this last visit to the barracks to gather the few things he’d left
behind really the end of their time together?

Arms crossed over his khaki-covered chest,
Rico stared, unseeingly, at the drab barracks wall.

“Don’t you get seasick?” he asked, inspired
and not ready to give up.

“I used to get sick as a dog.” Jack Ellison
looked up from the olive drab duffle he’d just zipped closed. “When
I decided to go for a SEAL trident, I started adaption treatment.
You know, like exposure therapy.”

“Say what?” Rico frowned.

“Mostly with one of those rotary chairs like
the astronauts use.” Ellison swung the duffle over his shoulder and
jerked his head toward the door. As Rico strode out alongside him,
he continued. “But I supplemented standard therapy. Boats, busses,
reading in the car.”

The guy was puking his guts up for duty.
Rico gave a sad shake of his head as they stepped out the door.
What kind of friend would he be if he didn’t step in?

“Let’s go,” was all he said, though. “Gina’s
making a special dinner to celebrate your kicking BUD/S ass.”

Rico figured his wife would have some ideas
to keep Ellison around. After all, there was nobody sneakier than
his Gina.

“What do you think of the blue? Do you think
it’s too flashy?”

Cari Tores lifted the sheer blue fabric so
that it draped over her petite curves, pooling like a lake at her
feet.

“I want it to say friendly and attractive,
but not to scream
I’ll do anything, I’m desperate
.” She
looked at the white satin folded in a tidy square on her friend’s
turquoise leather couch. “Would the white be better? You know,
clean and subtle and a little classy?”

“Depends on how you accent it,” Gina called
from the kitchen.

Accent it? But she hadn’t gotten that far
yet. Tossing the fabric aside, Cari dug into the extra-large
storage bin to search for accents.

She was an intelligent woman. She knew
perfectly well that her life wouldn’t end if everything didn’t look
perfect.

Except she was pretty sure it would.

“Gina, help,” she wailed, holding a pair of
tassels up like earrings. “Silver or gold?”

“Hold your horses. It’ll just take me a
second to get these stuffed peppers in the oven.” Taking five times
longer than promised—not that Cari was counting—Gina Santiago
finally
came around the stainless steel kitchen island,
wiping her hands on the skirt of her retro red polka-dotted
apron.

“Well....” Gina tucked her pink streaked
silver hair behind her ear and tilted her head to one side to
consider. “I don’t know. I think you should go with a desperate, do
me look. It’s closer to reality, isn’t it?”

“Tuh.” Her expression somewhere between
insult and outrage, Cari dropped her hands to her sides, the
tassels waving back and forth, tickling her bare knees. “We’re
talking about my program, Gina. Not my love life.”

Her vintage cat-eye glasses did nothing to
disguise Gina’s eye roll.

“And whose fault is it that a program that
highlights geriatric sexual aides is more exciting than your love
life?”

But that display of geriatric sexual aides
was the pinnacle of her career, Cari wanted to shout. After years
of barely making ends meet, two months ago it’d all come together.
She’d signed a contract with the community college teaching
empowerment classes. The psych teacher had invited her to join his
mastermind group, who’s connections had helped launch her most
popular group coaching program. Because it’d gone over so well and
because she really wanted to do it right and make a great
impression, she’d signed a lease that allowed her to hold her
coaching sessions at the gallery Gina worked at.

This was Cari’s dream job, her chance to
marry her life coaching skills with her love of art, to help guide
people to their highest joy. That her debut program was dubbed
opt-in
octogenarian orgasms
by her friends was fine
with her.

“It’s the dating fairy’s fault. She’s
holding out on me,” Cari said, getting back to Gina’s question with
an absent shrug as she first held the gold tassel against the blue
fabric, then the silver, then the gold again. “I’m grateful that
Esprit De L’Art is willing to host my group sessions. Your gallery
has some of the best erotic art in Northern California.”

“It’s Sophia’s gallery. I just manage it,”
Gina corrected, nudging Cari’s tassels aside to lay a rope of clear
beads over the blue fabric. “There. Go with the balls. Clean and
simple, they won’t distract from the art.”

“And they’re a nice subliminal message,
too,” Cari realized with a laugh as she stepped back to gauge the
effect. “Note, seniors who still want hot sex lives, how attractive
these empty, yet impressively large balls, are. Now check out this
erotic art and let’s talk about how to make yours work for
you.”

“You’re the therapist,” Gina agreed with a
laugh.

“Coach,” Cari corrected. She’d never found
the time—or the money--to get her master’s degree. But being a life
coach was just as good to her. Sure, she had to work a little
harder to be taken seriously. But when a woman looked like a
combination of a pinup girl and a pixie and coached subjects like
Hot Sex After Sixty
, she was used to those types of
challenges.

“You know, if you put as much energy into
dating as you do to making a temporary classroom look good, you
wouldn’t have to worry about that dating fairy,” Gina pointed out,
lifting a stack of black ceramic dishes from the kitchen island and
carrying them to the dining nook off the living room. “You’re hot,
Cari. Guys like that. And you’ve got that sweet side, too. Throw in
clever, hardworking, independent and funny and you should have them
lining up for dates. What the hell are you doing?”

Cari wanted to point out that if she knew
that, she’d fix it. She just hadn’t figured out how, yet.
Sometimes, late at night alone in bed, the ugly thought snuck into
her mind. What if she never found the right guy? What if she never
had the mind-blowingly awesome sex she assured her clients was
real. What if she ended up alone forever, without experiencing the
pleasure of love—the kind of love that led to marriage and
children.

The thought always scared her right out of
bed and into the kitchen in search of ice cream.

“Look,” Gina said, taking one glass, then
the other as Cari handed them to her. It was then that Cari
realized there were four place settings, not three. Before she
could ask, Gina continued. “I know this guy—”

“No!” Cari exclaimed, throwing both hands in
front of her face as if to ward off evil. “No matchmaking. No
way.”

“I’m not matchmaking.”

“Oh, really.” Cari dropped her hands just
enough to give Gina a narrow eyed look. “Then who else is coming to
dinner?”

“Nobody. I mean, he’s a friend of Rico’s,
and a nice enough guy. But he’s not your type.” Gina waved the
unnamed friend of Rico’s away as if he were inconsequential. “But
let’s get back to more important things. I know this guy—”

“Hey Gina, I’m home.”

Cari gave a whoop of delight, both at the
interruption and at seeing Gina’s husband in the doorway.

Swarthy good looks only added to the
masculine power of Rico Santiago, hottie extraordinaire and
all-around nice guy.

“Hey, Cari,” he greeted, tossing his camo
hat on table shaped like a pair of stocking-clad legs that stood
next to the door.

Before he could say more, she hurried over,
stood on tiptoes and gave him a quick hug. Even on tiptoes, she was
still short.

“It’s good to see you, too,” Rico joked,
hugging her right back with a laugh.

She knew he wasn’t a huggy kind of guy. But
Cari would have hugged anyone for saving her from a reprisal of yet
another of Gina’s matchmaking lectures.

But she liked Gina’s husband, so the gesture
was as sincere as it was grateful.

“I’m so glad to see you,” she said with a
laugh as she dropped down off her tiptoes. “I need a man’s opinion
and you’re just the one to ask.”

“Opinion on what?” Rico asked, his
expression cautious. With good reason, Cari supposed. Between
Gina’s fifties-funk tastes and the fact that his sister owned the
art gallery Gina worked at, the poor man had probably been asked to
look at some pretty strange things.

“Just a color scheme. I want to make sure
it’s manly enough,” Cari assured him before her expression turned
teasing. “And who better to ask than a guy manly enough to play
with explosives for a living?”

“Dispose of explosives,” Rico corrected
automatically, his expression and tone both taking on a wicked
edge. “And who better? How about two men?”

That’s when Cari realized that Rico had
brought company home with him. Company that Gina was giving a tight
hug.

Oh, my.

Cari wanted to give him a hug, too.

Maybe even a naked hug.

Because he looked like the kind of guy who’d
be really, really good at naked hugs. And other naked
greetings.

Tall, close to Rico’s six-foot, Cari judged.
It didn’t matter that he was dressed in jeans and a button-up
shirt, she could tell he was military. His buzz cut and formal
bearing said that clearly enough. Strong, built and sexy he exuded
power like some men exuded cologne. Add in sculpted cheekbones, a
firm jaw and full lips and Cari wanted to ask Gina why the hell he
wasn’t her type.

Then his eyes met hers.