Fall for a SEAL (3 page)

Annie blinked back unexpected tears and shook off the melancholy memories. No time to get lost in what might have been. Some asshole was messing with her brother’s memory, and that couldn’t stand. She straightened her shirt and joined Drew in the living room, just in time to see him tuck a handgun into
a concealed holster at his hip.
 

“Is that really necessary?”

He turned and smirked as she reached for the jewelry she’d left on the counter the night before. “I could ask you the same about that stuff.”

“My
stuff
can’t kill someone.” She kept her tone playful, because she had no doubt that his was the safest concealed carry around, but did people really just
do
that?

Had Kevin? Due to their
age difference and his career choice, she hadn’t known her brother as well as she’d have liked. There was supposed to have been time for that later as well.

Of course, that meant she didn’t really know Drew, either. How much of her opinion of him was colored by her memories of a brash older brother who played hard and resisted taming?
 

As if he could read her mind, he patted the gun. “I don’t
wear it all the time. I just...”

Yeah. There was something about having a stranger show up on your doorstep worried about boogeymen that brought out the paranoia. “No worries.”

“Besides,” he muttered as he pulled on a sweater over his snug black t-shirt. “Your stuff is pointy. I’m surprised Kevin didn’t teach you a thing or two about using whatever’s on hand.”

She laughed. “He did.” She took
a sobering deep breath. “I was just thinking about that, actually.”

He opened the door and gestured for her to move into the hall. As they made their way to the elevator, Drew regarded her with quiet curiosity, but he refrained from asking just which Kevin memory she’d gotten lost in. She was just about to offer something to keep the conversation going when he made a gruff noise in his throat
and changed the subject. “We can take my car. I park underground.”

She bobbed her head in agreement, and before too long they were buckled into a sports car that seemed way too small for his oversized frame. But he drove it with ease, his long, lean fingers dancing around on the gear shift, his right knee bopping against the center console panel whenever he wasn’t accelerating. She found herself
following the long curve of his arm up to his shoulders, round with working muscles, and then down the front of his body. She wondered idly if he looked larger than life when naked as well, and as that thought twirled around in her head, she turned and looked out the window, afraid the pink of embarrassment would give her away. What was wrong with her? From panic to pervert in less than five minutes.
 

Her friends would protest that looking was just fine, but it really wasn’t when it was your dead brother’s best friend who was trying to help you figure out why you’d been creep-stalked. Besides, looking at Drew probably got women in trouble. Women like Dana. God, he might be the world’s nicest friend, but Drew Castle had shown the night before that he could be a first-class dog when it came
to women, and no good would come of imagining him in his underwear.

Or out of it.
 

He drove northeast out of downtown, and before too long they pulled up in front of an old-school diner lit up with blue neon lights. They seated themselves in a booth and a waitress showed up a moment later with a steaming pot of coffee and two menus.
 

“Hey, honey.” She smiled at Drew, a friendly middle-of-the-night
grin. “Where are your friends?”

“Pushed ’em off the boat.” He slid his mug forward and turned to Annie. “Coffee?”

“God, yes.” She offered them both a weak smile. Breakfast at four in the morning, in the middle of drama...
sure, everyone just act like it’s just another day at the office.
But for Drew and Sarah, if her nametag could be trusted, it was exactly that.

They ordered—two eggs with ham
for Annie, three with steak for Drew—and after Sarah whirled away with a pop of her gum, Drew leaned back in the booth and notched his head to the side, regarding her with unvarnished curiosity.
 

“What?”

“You’re handling this well.”

“Doesn’t feel like it on the inside, trust me. I’m a fish out of water.”

He lifted his mug and sipped slowly, his eyes trained on her the whole time. “So what
is your water?”

“UCLA. I’m a graduate student there.”

He stilled for a moment, his mug in mid-air, then he set it down and eased forward over the table. “Really? That’s great.”

She laughed. “I’m not sure how great it will be when I’m looking for a job at the end of my studies. I’m in the History Department.”

“Ancient History?”

“Nope. The exact opposite actually. Modern American History.”

“Fascinating.” From the way his eyes had lit up, and the keen interest all over his face, she actually believed him. A warm flush started in the middle of her chest and radiated up and out. “Kevin said that you were smart, but he never—” He cut himself off and reached across the table to touch her hand. “I’m sorry. He talked about you all the time. I just wasn’t the greatest listener.”

It wouldn’t
have occurred to Annie that Drew, or anyone else, would find her studies anything other than boring. But with his warm, strong fingers branding themselves on her skin, she was having trouble thinking of a way to reassure him it was fine. “Uhm...”

He shifted his grip, slipping down and around her hand so his fingers cupped hers and his thumb traced over the round pad of flesh on her palm. “I’m
listening now, Annie. I’m glad you came to me last night. I’m going to help you.” She glanced up, reluctant to look away from the hypnotic pattern he was tracing on her skin, but something in his voice snapped through her silliness. She looked at him, and he looked at her, something heady and tempting on his face, but then he licked his lips and shuttered his gaze. “I’m going to be there for you
because Kevin can’t. Think of me as his surrogate, okay?”

No
, she wanted to shout.
You can’t sit there like sex-on-a-stick and ask me to think of you like a brother!
There was no way she’d be stupid enough to actually sleep with the man, but if he kept invoking her brother’s name, it would make her future filthy fantasies incredibly awkward. “Sure.”

They both retreated to coffee and private
thoughts until Sarah returned with plates piled high with food. As the scent of buttered sourdough bread, perfectly cooked ham and heavily seasoned hash browns filled her nose, Annie’s mouth started watering and her stomach growled loud enough to grab Drew’s attention. He glanced up from his plate with a smirk and she blushed. “I didn’t eat dinner last night.”

“This is dinner and breakfast all
rolled into one.” He pointed with the back end of his fork. “Dig in. You’re not going to offend me.”

That hadn’t been on her mind. She wrinkled her brow and shook her head.

“What?” He washed down his mouthful of food with a big gulp of coffee.

“Do women usually eat like dainty flowers around you?”

“No.” He laughed. “I don’t usually eat with the women I...hang out with.”

Wow. That was even
less sexy than the surrogate brother comment. “That’s...nice.”

He cocked one eyebrow, but didn’t respond again.

She started to slow down as her plate emptied, and when he looked up again, his smirky tone had shifted back to the keen interest of before. “So, history. What’s your specific area of interest?”

“Economics. One of my advisors specializes in modern world capitalism, the other in American
political history. My interest is the financing of grassroots political activism, but it’ll be a while before I get to my own research. For now I’m taking classes and working as a research assistant on other projects.”

“Shoot, that’s pretty cool. And your dad was a professor, right?”

She nodded. “Yep. Public Policy at USC. That’s where I did my undergraduate studies. I had to have a special
course schedule in my third year because his class was a required component.” She knew her voice was wistful, but this was Drew. She might not know him very well, but instinctively she understood she didn’t need to hide her pain from him. “Him teaching me would have been a conflict of interest, so I took an equivalent course online. That was probably harder, having him grill me to see if I was learning
everything I needed to know from
some other teacher
.”
 

Drew nodded and chewed, then swallowed some coffee. He took his time looking at her and rolling that over before pushing the conversation again. “Kevin didn’t talk about your dad a lot.”

She quirked her lips to the side. That didn’t surprise her. “They didn’t get along, really. My father worried Kevin wasn’t interested in academia. Kevin
didn’t like that Dad questioned the government’s use of military action from time to time.”

Drew snorted. “What an asshole.”

“Hey!”

“Not your dad. Kevin. He probably shared the exact same opinions. We just don’t have the luxury of voicing them.”

Annie picked up her coffee, buying herself a second to think. “Kev? Critical of...anything?”

“Hell ya. Between you, me and the toast, most of us
get frustrated when we’re sent in like an expensive Band-Aid when the real solutions are longer, more complicated—”

“And probably even more expensive.” She sighed. “Wow.”

“Hey, it’s okay.”

She curled a small smile for his sake. “Sure, I know. It’s just... you knew him better than me.”

“While you’re here, I’ll share what I know, okay?” She nodded and he grinned. “But first, tell me about the
boring research they’re making you do while you jump through hoops to do your own.” He took a huge bite of his steak and chewed.

“How did you know?” This time, the smile was bigger, and very real. “Uhm, let’s see. I get to tag along on some interesting research trips. We’re going to Washington next month to interview a few senators. Muriel Castillo, Lawrence Lassiter and Rob Harris.”

Drew’s
fork clattered on his plate. He finished chewing, slowly, while his eyes burned a hole in her head.

“What?”

“Rob Harris?”

“Do you know him?”

“Do you?”

“What? No. I know he’s on the Senate Committee on Armed Service. Is he one of the ones you and Kevin aren’t fans of?”

“First, I said that Kevin had opinions. Lots of guys do. I don’t. Not really. I do what my commanding officer orders me to
do, because I trust he’s thinking about that shit so I don’t have to. Second, when these interviews were set up, who made the arrangements?”

“I did. Being an RA is a lot like being a lackey.”

“You called Rob Harris’s office and set up an appointment? What did you say the interview was about?”

“Civilian leadership, military connections, rise to power...that’s the scope of my advisor’s research.”
His probing gaze was completely freaking her out. “Drew, are you thinking that has something to do with the message?”

— —
 

It definitely did, but how much could he tell her? A little bit of knowledge was a dangerous thing, and she was already on the verge of panic.

Now wasn’t the time for talking anyway. He slid a glance at her cell phone, sitting quietly on the table beside their mostly
empty plates. A rapid-fire burst of curse words slid through his mind as he realized they’d probably said too much. He couldn’t tell her everything he knew about the dark underbelly of Washington, even if there wasn’t a probable bug in front of them. Frustration rolled through his gut that he was operating on the fly. He was a team player. Sure, he was trained to deal with any variability, but
his operations were analysed, planned and executed based on a lot more intel than an ugly gut feeling.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop was an option, but not one that sat well with him. An alternate plan started to crystalize in his mind. He grabbed his backpack, threw some money on the table, and without another word reached across and tugged Annie out of her seat. With a yelp, she snatched
her stuff with her free hand and stumbled along in his wake as he tugged her out of the diner.
 

“Drew, what the hell is going on?” She slammed her hand on the car door as he moved to open it. “Hang on a second!”

“Sugar, we might not have a second. Get in, and I’ll explain as soon as I can.”

He waited just long enough for her to do up her seatbelt then he peeled out of the lot and tore off
into the darkness. His destination was just on the other side of the next main thoroughfare. Annie kept glancing at him, and he willed her not to say anything until they got there. He turned again, this time in the dark pre-dawn shadow of a hospital. He quickly navigated around the building branded with a glowing H and pulled into a parking garage.
 

Annie gave up any pretense of not staring at
him as he quickly wound his way up to an upper level and pulled into one of many vacant spots. Her gaze was hot on his skin and a small part of his mind started to process why that didn’t make him uncomfortable.

He grabbed her phone, stuck it in the glove box along with his, and silently indicated for her to get out of the car.

“Why are we here?” she asked as he started walking toward the stairwell,
the hollow echo of his footsteps the only sound bouncing off the bare concrete.

“Because if anyone calls asking about you here, they’ll hit a wall of privacy protection. At least temporarily. Let’s go find a bus.”

“This is crazy,” she muttered, but she trundled after him. “We don’t want my phone in case they call again?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Well, that clears that up.” She ducked past him
as he held open the door to the stairwell.
 

He sighed. She was right. She deserved at least a partial explanation.

The blaze in her dark brown eyes told him taking a second to think about what information he could offer was a mistake. “Hey, if this is annoying for you—”

“Annie, this isn’t—” He barked out a short laugh. “Annoying? Hell, no. This is better than a regular day at the office for
me. But I’m not used to explaining myself.”