Breaking the Rules (2 page)

Izzy found his spare bungee cords in his vest pocket and pulled out a couple. Those little suckers were useful, even when the SEALs
weren’t up in the mountains. They would work better than a belt to keep Jenk’s broken arm supported by that piece of wood.

The wood, however, left much to be desired. So Izzy tossed Dan the cords, reaching down and untying his own bootlaces, even as he told Jenk, “I say go for it. Buy the house of your dreams.”

As he’d expected, Danny objected, which was good. Jenk needed a little distraction. “And hold two mortgages if the condo doesn’t sell?” Dan said.

“Sure, why not?” Izzy quickly stripped off his sock. It was a little soggy and extremely aromatic, but it would do the trick.

Dan was sputtering. “Because … it’s insane?” But he saw what Izzy was doing and held out his hand for the sock and covered the piece of wood’s ragged end with it, even as Izzy jammed his bare foot back into his boot.

“No, it’s not,” Izzy told Jenkins as he took the sock-covered wood from Dan and tested it against his own hand. Not great, but much better. Uncovered, that slice of raw wood would’ve scraped the shit out of Jenkie’s palm. His sock gave it at least a little bit of padding and protection. “Because if you don’t sell it, you can rent it. That’s a great Plan B, my brother. You know, my lease is up in a month. I could be your tenant.”

Jenk and Lindsey’s condo was much nicer than his current place—which stupidly still reeked of memories of Izzy’s too-short marriage to Eden. Although how that could be, Izzy didn’t understand. He’d been married to her for … what? A week? Damn, he’d only made love to her once—but it had been in his bed, in his bedroom, in his stupid, stupid apartment, on their wedding night.

It had been an event of momentous importance that Izzy still dreamed about—both feverishly at night and in unguarded moments during the daytime, when his thoughts wandered off to a fantasyland where wishes came true.

Not only was Eden uncommonly beautiful with her big brown eyes and lustrously dark hair, her flawless smooth skin, heart-shaped face, that sensual mouth that was quick to smile. But she also got Izzy’s
jokes. She spoke his language. She was funny and smart and courageous, and yes, a little bit crazy. Reckless. Unafraid to dance to a different drummer.

All that, plus a body that didn’t quit …?

Back when they’d first met, Izzy’d fallen in lust with her at first sight, and solidly in love within the first five minutes they’d talked. But she didn’t stay in San Diego for long. She left almost immediately, to visit her Army sergeant father in Germany.

But then, six months later, when Eden had resurfaced back in the States, she’d been six months pregnant and in dire need of a knight in shining armor. So Izzy’d married her, even though there was no way on earth that baby she’d been carrying could have possibly been his.

But he didn’t care. He just wanted to be her hero.

And to get into her pants. Which he’d done after marrying her.

But then she’d miscarried, lost the baby, and run back to Germany. And spent the past ten months refusing to see him.

Even though he’d gone all the way to Europe to try to see her, more times than he could count.

“Jenkins has a two-bedroom,” Dan pointed out. “What are you going to do, get a roommate?”

“Ooh, Dan,” Izzy said. “Great idea. We could finally live together.” He held the splint out so that Jenkins could put his wrist against it. This was the part that was going to hurt, but Jenk nodded for them to do it, just get it over with. He closed his eyes.

But it was Danny who made the choking, gagging sounds as they got Jenk as patched up as he was going to be—at least until he returned to the base and saw a doctor.

But Izzy couldn’t resist pushing it, even though the last thing he wanted was Danny freaking Gillman for a roommate. “Seriously, Dan, if we split the rent it would be pretty cheap. You’re not going to keep bunking in the enlisted quarters, are you, now that you and Jenn are tight? What are you going to do when she comes to San Diego to visit? It’s time you moved into big-boy housing.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Dan said, genuinely pissed. Apparently Izzy had trod on a hot button. Interesting. Was it the mention of Jennilyn visiting or just the mention of Jennilyn?

“I’ve found that I’m a little shy,” Izzy said, “for such blatantly public displays of self-affection. Besides, I like to be wined and dined before I have my way with myself. I’m an old-fashioned kind of guy.”

“Old-fashioned,” Dan scoffed. “Is that the excuse you use to convince yourself that you’re not a shithead?
I’m old-fashioned, because back in the eighteen hundreds men regularly took children as their brides …
”

She wasn’t a child
, Izzy stopped himself from saying, because he was
not
going to talk about Eden anymore. Not with anyone—and especially not her asshole brother. That part of his life was over and done. In fact, as soon as he got back to San Diego, he was going to ask the senior chief for some help in finding a divorce lawyer.

But Dan was into tit-for-tatting, and since Izzy had stumbled onto one of his hot buttons, dude now felt compelled to jump with both feet onto Izzy’s.

In the past, Izzy would have risen to the bait and their conversation would’ve gone a little like this:

“Y’okay?” Izzy asked Jenk instead as the other SEAL experimented with the splint, cautiously moving his arm. Dan was watching closely, too.

And this time when Jenk nodded, it was a solid
yes
.

At that, both Izzy and Dan turned in a unison that couldn’t have been more precise had it been choreographed, and they went in separate directions—Dan toward Lopez, and Izzy toward Tony V.

It was clear that they didn’t need a debate or a discussion to agree they’d already spent far too freaking much time together today.

Although the good news was that neither of them was walking away with a bloody nose.

Of course, there was still a lot of daylight left.

Jennilyn LeMay was having a day.

It had started when she got to work and realized that she’d gotten the mother of all runs in her pantyhose, and that she didn’t have a spare pair in her desk drawer.

She’d only had time for the quickest trip to the drugstore on the next block over, but that proved ineffective. Unbelievably, they were completely out of queen-size in every color and every conceivable brand, as if the place had been descended upon by a drove of bargain-hunting opera singers. Best Jenn could find, way in the back behind the tube socks, was a pair of thick white tights that were labeled both queen-size
and
petite—clearly designed for two-hundred-pound height-challenged nurses, rather than giantesses like Jenn who weren’t quite six feet tall if they both lied and slouched.

No doubt about it, as far as her hopes went for—quite literally—covering her ass, the fat lady was singing.

While wearing seventy pairs of pantyhose.

The store clerk helpfully went to the same rack that Jenn had already searched before informing her that they still had plenty of size large—maybe that would work. She then turned and looked at Jenn, squinting slightly as she appraised her, adding, “Probably not.”

And yes, lady. You got it. There
was
no way in hell that Jenn was going to be able to squeeze herself into plain old regular large. And thanks a billion for the pre-coffee esteem-bludgeoning judgment.

Sticking out her tongue and announcing, “My super-hot Navy SEAL boyfriend likes me just the way I am,” seemed a little childish. Especially since she’d been cautious about referring to Dan Gillman as her boyfriend to her friends and family—let alone acquaintances.

It wasn’t that he didn’t fit the definition. He sent her an e-mail every day, when he could. Usually it was brief—
Too tired to say more than hey …
was a common one, along with
Thanks for the package
, and
Dreamed about you again last night, wild woman …
But sometimes he wrote her long, intimate e-mails about his highly dysfunctional family, about adventures he’d had growing up, about his plans for the future, about the unjust oppression of women that he witnessed every day, about a myriad of things that mattered to him.

And she e-mailed him back, also every day. She sent packages to him, too, sometimes as often as twice a week.

And yes, the first and only time they’d met they’d shared some ridiculously excellent sex along with a whole lot of intimate pillow talk. That, too, worked with the standard boyfriend/girlfriend definition.

But when Dan had suddenly gotten all
I love you
, after helping to save Jenn’s life, well …

She’d needed to be certain that it wasn’t just a heady mix of adrenaline and hormones talking, because she knew that she wasn’t his usual type. So she’d sent him away, telling him that if he were serious about their relationship he could prove it by coming back.

Of course, days later he’d called to tell her that he was heading overseas, into one of the war zones. He couldn’t tell her where and he couldn’t tell her when he’d be back, but she knew from what he didn’t say that he was going to Afghanistan.

There was no time for her to fly to California, to see him off. He was leaving immediately.

Jenn had cried for a week, torn between knowing that she’d done
the right thing, and regretting that she’d wasted the little time they might’ve spent together.

But that still didn’t make Dan her boyfriend.

So she said nothing to the store clerk. She just left, hoseless.

There was another drugstore a mere three blocks away, but Jenn had no time to go there. She had a conference call that she had to take at 9:15, and another at 10, so she’d hidden her bare, winter-pale legs beneath her desk and hoped she wouldn’t be required to leave the office before her day ended at 8 p.m.

It wasn’t an unrealistic hope. As New York State Assemblywoman Maria Bonavita’s chief of staff, Jenn spent most of her time in their New York City office using phone, e-mail, and fax to put out the little fires that sprang up in the course of a day.

But unfortunately today’s fire wasn’t little, and it required a face-to-face with some rightfully frustrated and angry constituents. And since Maria was in Albany, Jenn’s had to be the face they put out there. Because although her title was chief of staff, she was also Maria’s
entire
staff, not counting the unpaid college interns. There was no one else to send.

So Jenn took her larger-than-large unhosiered legs, and her bespectacled face that Dan claimed was “cute” despite her Amazonian size, and headed for the boarded-up building that had served as a homeless shelter for veterans before the grease fire in the restaurant next door had done its damage.

It had happened months earlier, in the coldest part of the winter—which had been devastating for the men who filled the shelter to capacity every night.

But there were problems with the insurance payout, as well as safety issues, that kept the place locked up tight. The shelter’s organizers, led by a Vietnam veteran named Jack Ventano, had come to Maria’s office for help after weeks of runaround.

She was trying to get them the assistance they needed to get their facility up and running again. But it wasn’t happening fast enough. And now Jack had called, demanding that Maria come take a tour of
the place, to see firsthand the mold that was starting to grow on the water-damaged walls.

Jenn had just gone into a CVS that was halfway to the shelter, and was searching the overhead signs for the hosiery aisle when her cell phone rang.

It was Mick Callahan, a detective with the NYPD, and a friend of Jenn’s.

She answered as she continued to scan and finally just made a choice to go down the narrow aisle to the back of the store. “Hello?”

“Maria needs to get her ass down to the Vet Center,” Mick said in his gravelly, native New Yorker’s voice, without proper greeting or ceremony. “ASAP.”

“She’s upstate, but I’m already on my way,” Jenn told him.

“Hail a cab,” he told her. “And Mary, while you’re at it. You’re definitely gonna need divine intervention for this one.”

She stopped, directly in front of a display of L’eggs. They had both her size and the color she’d hoped to find. Alleluia. “What’s going on?”

“About seven of the vets have broken the lock on the door,” Mick told her grimly as she grabbed a pair and headed for the checkout, up front. “They’ve gone inside, with several crates of supplies. I think they’re going to lock themselves in until they get some action. We’ve been ordered to get them out, forcibly if necessary, but I’ve convinced the lieutenant to give you a chance to get down here and defuse the situation, but the clock’s ticking. Jenn, seriously, you need to be here. Now.”

“I’m on my way.” There were seven people on line and one slow-moving, half-asleep cashier, so Jenn sighed and put the pantyhose in a clearly designated dump basket near the exit before going out to the street and hailing a cab.

Eden Gillman Zanella stood in the shadows of the shallow wing, just offstage, and tried to calm her pounding heart.

This was no big deal.

She just had to walk out there and do this exactly the way she’d practiced. If she got this job, she’d be bringing home somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred dollars a night in tips.