Hunter's Heart

Hunter’s Heart

Rita Henuber

Navy SEAL, Santino “Hunter” Lozano is ready to settle down. The problem is finding a woman suited to the long separations and hardships of a military wife. When Hunter meets Celia West, he believes he’s finally found the woman. A smart, beautiful Department of Defense contractor, Celia conducts “after-action”
interviews with Special Operators giving her special knowledge of the demands of his job
.
She also understands there are things about the job he can never share.

Celia has long wondered what the secretive Spec Ops men are like away from the job. When the hot and mysterious SEAL asks her out, she accepts thinking there might also by some fun time between the sheets.

Hunter soon makes it clear he wants more than fun time. He’s determined to have Celia in his life and he sets about to make it happen.

Celia’s personal and professional life is a complicated tangle of dark secrets and she can’t afford to let anyone close. Not even Hunter could protect her should the violent problems of her past reappear.

Celia gives in to deeper feelings and Hunter sweeps her into a life of love, family and loyalty she thought she could never have.

And maybe she can’t. To be with Hunter Celia realizes she must share her secrets. At least some of them, for telling all would place him in more danger than he’s ever known and she would surely lose him.

Copyright © 2014 Rita Henuber

Published by Rita Henuber

HUNTER’S HEART

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www.ritahenuber.com

All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.

All rights reserved.

www.ritahenuber.com

Forward

In the SEAL teams, a lot of the men have nicknames. In some platoons, everyone has one. In other platoons, there are none. The nicknames can be shortened first or last names, or come from something memorable they did. Not necessarily a good something.

Lt David “Zoom” Zunno

Called Zoom for his last name, or LT for his rank.

Senior Chief Joe “Senior” Gerber

Called Senior because of his rank.

CPO Santino “Hunter” Lozano

Hunter will tell you in the book.

Hector “Doc” Lopez

Hospital Corpsman—Official team medic.

James T. “Kirk” Quirk

For the last name—says the new Kirk looks a lot like him.

Neil “Bambi” Lewis

In sniper school, stalking in his Ghillie Gear, he crawled to a position next to a newborn deer. Mama deer came back and pawed the living shit out of him.

William “Bug” Volker

Initials morphed into VW then Bug. Plus he’s the size of a VW. That’s what Bug likes to tell everyone. Real truth is they were on an urban training exercise, using an abandoned building in Miami. Bug fell through a floor. In the space between the floor he was on, and the ceiling of the next floor, millions of cock roaches had taken up residence. When he fell, they came with him, totally covering him.

Harry “Red” Patten

Red Bull is his drink of choice.

Mike “Hawkeye” Healy

Played tackle for the Iowa Hawkeyes.

Andy Becker

A soft-spoken rookie, too new to the team to have embarrassed himself yet. Most call him Kid. Too soon to know if it will stick.

Alexander “Pops” Stokes

During BUD/S he went completely gray.

Pete “Hobbit” Bartholomew

Shortest man in the platoon, if not the SEALs.

Frogmen

Navy SEALS were originally known as ”Frogmen” or Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT). There are times SEALs will call one another Frog.

Chapter 1

Gonna be the best day of my life.

If Hunter knew anything, it was self-control. Self-control was the primary rule of life. Be in control of yourself. If you weren’t, someone else would be. They would get inside your head and mess you up. With self-control came focus and confidence. Early in his quest to become a Navy SEAL, he’d learned making it through training was ninety percent mental attitude. By the time he arrived in San Diego for BUD/S, the SEAL Basic Training, he had the mental attitude to do anything.

He understood life to be like a chess game. Every move you made, there would be a counter move. In all things, from a simple game to deadly combat, winning meant looking ahead to future moves. He’d also discovered every person and place had its own rhythm. To know and understand these rhythms, he observed and studied. At first, it was taxing brainwork. He did it obsessively, until predicting moves and reactions in others became innate. He also developed an equal ability to mask his own moves. Until now.

Now, he sat in his truck in a driving rain, waiting to confront someone as unreadable as he was. The private contractor who for three hours that afternoon had grilled him about his participation in a hot South American operation.

Contractors had no particular skills in military or government procedure. They asked predetermined questions and gauged the veracity of the verbal answers against the written after-action reports and the men’s reactions. Human lie detectors so to speak. It wasn’t his first after-action interview and it wouldn’t be his last. It was the first time he’d allowed the questioning to get under his skin. Capturing a next generation narco sub loaded with drugs and millions in counterfeit US dollars had been considered a success by the head shed. Not him.

Returning home a man short took the job out of the success column and he had no problem voicing his opinion.

A rivulet of sweat moved down the side of his face. He swept it away with his fingers, keeping his eyes on the doors of the government building. The wipers
thunked
rapidly side-to-side, barely keeping the pounding rain from obliterating his view. His heartbeat ramped up, mimicking the wipers. What he was about to do was skating the edge of the acceptable envelope. It wasn’t because of severely bending some rule. Been there, done that. It was more like
who
he was intending to bend the rules with.

The interviewer, Celia West.

Today was the second time he’d sat opposite her in a small room. Intrigued by
her
control, looks, scent—and hell, just about everything about her. He’d kicked himself for not approaching her after their first meet. In fact, he’d tried. He’d thought about it too long and by the time he decided to go for it, she’d vanished. He’d quickly learned these contractors were more impossible to track than a deep cover agent.

This time he wasn’t letting her get away. He would ask her out. Common sense said she couldn’t go out with him until her report was finished, turned in and accepted. That could easily be several days or weeks. Whatever time frame, he had the distinct impression she wouldn’t break any rules—and he wouldn’t want her to.

A ship’s general alarm blasted from his cell, announcing a text. He looked at the display,
On her way out
. He replied with
OK,
and disconnected. He’d asked the duty marine at the desk to do whatever it took to delay her departure long enough for him to change and get outside. She should be coming through the door about….
There she was
.

She stood under the portico staring out at the rain then dug in her jacket pocket and came out with a phone—probably checking the weather. His phone’s super-duper Special-Operators-Only weather app said heavy rain for forty-five more minutes. As advertised, the afternoon sky had opened up and was dropping bullets and grenades. He loved it when lousy weather was his friend.

She looked out at the rain, back at the phone and then to the building entrance. Even at this distance, he read her frustration. He fired up the truck, rolled onto the sidewalk and stopped with the passenger door beneath the edge of the portico cover. He hopped out and sprinted around the front of the Silverado, coming to a stop only feet from her.

“Ms. West.” He shook his arms, flicking away the clinging rain.

She squinted up at him, frowning. A look of consternation came and went, replaced with a hard what-the-hell look.

“Santino Lozano.
Hunter
.” He wanted to make it clear he wasn’t a whack job intending to do her harm. “You interviewed me inside.” He’d worn a disguise for the interview.

Contractors were vetted but recent incidents on military installations proved there were plenty of crazies out there. You never knew if some
bozo
working for a defense contractor would go after their fifteen minutes of fame and release an identity.

A long moment went by. The only sounds were those bullets and grenades hitting the metal portico roof.

“Yes,” she finally said.

He liked that she didn’t back away. “This rain isn’t going to let up anytime soon.” He glanced at the phone in her hand with the red radar blob visible.

“Yes.”

“Can I give you a ride or…?” He glanced back to his truck. “Or help you get to your car without getting soaked.” Her eyebrows rose. “If you didn’t drive, I can take you to the nearest place to get a cab or give you a ride to where you’re staying.”

She checked the phone screen then looked back at the door. Admittance to the building was by special permit only. Visitors had to be buzzed inside and in ten minutes they’d close to any visitor.

“I’m not a stalker,” he said, giving her the smile that generally wowed ladies. “I’m a good guy.” A gust of wind coated them with mist. “The wind picks up any more and there’ll be whitecaps out there.” He tipped his head the direction of the parking lot.

Unimpressed with the smile or his attempt at humor she looked out at the flooding lot. “I drove. I don’t see how—”

“Leave it to me,” he interrupted. “Let me have your keys.”

Her expression grew wary.

“Here.” He dug his wallet from a pocket and closed the distance between them, holding out the battered brown leather. “There’s four hundred and twenty dollars in there. You already know who I am—but my driver’s license, military ID, and Costco card are in there. If I take off with your car you can run up a hell of a bill at Costco or have me behind bars before this storm passes.”

Crap
. There were also two condoms inside.

She said nothing. A flash lit the gray sky, followed two seconds later by a roof-rattling percussion. Ms. West reached inside her purse then held out keys.
All right.
They exchanged items and he headed for his truck.

“Wait,” she called out. “You don’t know which car is mine.”

He held the fob up and pressed. The lights on a blue Nissan parked in a visitors space flashed. “Yours?” he asked without looking back. He didn’t want her to see the big-assed grin on his face.

“Yes,” she said. The smile in her voice loud and clear.

He climbed into his truck, pulled alongside the Nissan and was inside in less than a minute. The seat was set far enough forward to cram his knees against the dash but he didn’t mess with the positioning. He turned the key and the music blared with, ‘
This is gonna be the best day of my life, my li…i…i…i…ife,’
loud enough to make the raindrops collected on the driver’s side window dance. There was a sign. He clicked off the music and drove the car up onto the sidewalk the same as he had his truck. “Here you go,” he said, holding the door for her.

As she bent to slide in behind the wheel, he noticed strands of her slicked-back hair curling. She turned, ready to speak, but he beat her to it.

“I’d like to take you out.”

She visibly tensed.

“I left a card on the console with my name and cell number. Don’t know what the rules are but figure you aren’t allowed contact with someone you’re doing a report on. Don’t look at the card until you finish your report. Don’t look at it if it will cause you any problems.”