Navy SEAL’s Virgin Lover (2 page)

“I guess Sam is fine, huh? Short for Samantha?”

A short bark announced that he was on the right track, and he patted his newfound friend on her flank. “You’re a fine dog, Sam, and I’ll take good care of you if you promise to do the same for me.”

It wasn’t long before they’d reached the small cabin he now called home, and in spite of himself, Raminar felt a sudden uplift in his mood, which had been terrifically black of late. As he watched Sam cross the threshold into the small place, he wondered if this was actually the sign he’d been hoping for. The sign that his life was finally turning around.

“I don’t know, Mom. Perhaps you just have to go with the flow, huh?”

Erin’s older sister Julie was having one of her moods again. Though she still lived at home, she’d much rather have moved in with her boyfriend already. But Bob kept postponing; saying he ‘wasn’t ready to take the big leap’ yet.

Bob, a big softie of a guy, probably feared the day Julie would take over his life in even more ways than she already had, and quite sensibly stalled for time.

In the meantime, the rest of the family was forced to undergo Julie’s weird mood swings and her mildly tyrannical tendencies.

Dad always said that Julie had been born a couple centuries too late. She would have made one hell of a Roman dictator, if women had been allowed to rise to that hallowed position.

“I think I’ll go with the blue,” Mom finally decided, wavering between two skirts. Tonight was her older sister’s wedding anniversary, and the whole family had been invited.

Erin had managed to get herself excused from the occasion. As if she wanted to bear that cross along with the preparations for her big trip.

“I think you look great in both,” was her considered opinion when asked for her two cents.

Mom looked doubtful. “I look great in nothing, I fear, honey.” She had much the same relationship with her older sister as Erin had with hers: contentious and fraught with as much sibling rivalry and mutual hatred as was humanly possible without resorting to actual violence.

“Just pick one, Mom,” Julie said, throwing up her hands in exasperation. “We’re supposed to be there in one hour, remember? And we
so
don’t want to be late.”

Auntie Dixie abhorred one thing more than all else, and that was tardiness. She was the headmistress of the local high school, and as such had made both Erin and Julie’s life a living hell. It had always surprised Erin her aunt subjected her own family to the same set of rigid rules as she did her pupils.

“What is she going to do? Make you stay after school?” Erin snorted, but Mom and Julie didn’t seem to appreciate the attempt at levity.

“She’ll never let us live it down, honey,” opined Mom. “Ten years from now, she’ll still remind us of the day we were late for her wedding anniversary, won’t she, Julie?”

“Just… choose something already, Mom. Bob doesn’t want to set foot inside that house until we’re there, so if we’re late, he’ll be late.”

Erin secretly harbored the thought that Bob was a bit of a coward. On the other hand, like the rest of them, he’d grown to fear and loathe Auntie Dixie, whose demeanor was a lot less jolly than her name might suggest.

Mom turned to her, and took her by the shoulders. “Remember, honey. If she asks? You’re down with the flu, all right? Doctor’s orders?”

“Don’t worry, Mom. It’s not as if she’s going to phone me and check, right?”

Mom’s unwavering gaze told her otherwise. “She might. So sound sick and cough a lot.”

“Perhaps simply don’t pick up the phone?” suggested Julie.

Mom’s eyes widened in panic. “Oh no, whatever you do, pick up. If she thinks you’re ignoring her, she’ll know for sure you’re faking it.”

She was right. Auntie Dixie had a sixth sense for fakers. The few times Mom had kept Erin home, she’d always known when she was really sick and when she simply didn’t feel like going to school.

She sighed. “All right. I’ll make sure it sounds as if I’m on the verge of keeling over and kicking the bucket.”

Mom eyed her sweetly. “Thank you, honey, and sorry to have to ask you to do this. But you know how she is.”

“Why can’t she just join?” muttered Julie under her breath.

“Because I have to pack,” Erin riposted, raising her voice. “In case you forgot, my plane leaves tomorrow.”

“How could I ever forget? You only told us about a hundred gazillion times already.”

She stuck out her tongue, knowing full well she was behaving like a twelve-year-old and not caring not bit. Julie always had this effect on her.

“Girls, girls,” muttered Mom absentmindedly. She’d finally opted to go with the blue plaid skirt, and was now smoothing it while studying her reflection in the mirror. “What do you think?”

Julie rolled her eyes. “You look fine, Mom.”

“Yes. You look really pretty.”

“Prettier than Auntie Dixie?” she ventured, chewing her lower lip and suddenly looking mischievous.

Both girls had to laugh at this. It wasn’t hard to look prettier than Auntie Dixie, who had somehow inherited all the masculine genes in the family when finally venturing outside the womb. Erin often thought she was actually a man merely pretending to be a woman.

When finally she had the house to herself, she trudged upstairs and took in the devastation that was her room. She’d displayed all possible items of clothing she wanted to bring along to India on her bed, her pristinely empty trunk placed against the headboard. Now the big trick was to fit it all in.

Somehow, the task seemed to defy the laws of nature. Still, she had to try. Even though Soph had told her not to bring too much—they could buy anything they wanted right there, and much cheaper than in the West at that—she still couldn’t part with her best T-shirts, her three flower print dresses, her five jeans and that cashmere sweater that brought out the color of her eyes so well.

After all, even though she hadn’t told Sophie, her one purpose for this trip was to find a mate for life, and how was she ever going to do that except than by looking her absolute gorgeous best?

And since she wasn’t really pretty by nature—with her slim build, her ratty red hair, all those horrible freckles and her plain face—the only way she could entice a man to give her a second look—one of the prerequisites of landing him in her bed—was by drawing the attention away from her unimpressive features and wow him with her outfit.

So for the next two hours, she set to work fitting the contents of two suitcases into one. And she’d almost succeeded too, when her phone rang, and she had to abandon her efforts to close the suitcase by sitting on top of it and willing the lock to close.

The moment she heaved her butt, the lid swung open again, and half of her stuff tumbled out.

Blowing a straying strand of hair from her brow, she heaved a curse, and picked up her phone.

“Yes, Soph. Almost ready, Soph,” she answered dutifully when inquired if she was done packing already.

A loud squee had her put the phone away from her ear for a spell.

“Can you believe we’re actually going?” her friend squeaked, the sound almost too high for the human ear. “We’re actually going to India, Erin! To India!”

“I know!” she responded with what she hoped was sufficient enthusiasm.

Sophie wasn’t fooled, however. She could swear Sophie had a supernatural gift for sensing her moods. “You don’t sound happy,” she said in an accusing tone. “Why aren’t you happy?”

“I
am
happy,” she assured her. “Why shouldn’t I be? India, here we come. Squee!”

“What’s wrong? Is it Bart? Did he call you again? Erin, you have to start blocking his calls. I told you a million times he’s the harbinger of bad news.”

“It’s not Bart,” she said truthfully. In all honesty, Bart had probably forgotten all about her the minute she broke up with him.

“What is it, then? I know you, Erin. You’ve been fretting.”

She was right. She
had
been fretting. She sighed and decided she’d probably spend more energy trying to deflect Sophie’s well-meant efforts at cheering her up than telling her what was really bothering her.

“What if I don’t find my soulmate, Soph? What if in the whole of India, I can’t find a single guy worth pursuing? Or, worse, what if there’s plenty of guys but none of them are interested in me. Or worse still! What if the one guy whom I’m meant to be with is out there, and we never even meet? India is so big, what are the odds of us ever finding each other?”

The question had been driving her nuts. The more she contemplated the odds of she and Mister Right meeting in a country the size of a continent the more dispirited she became.

“You worry too much, hon,” was Sophie’s considered opinion. “Think less and do more is my advice. Just enjoy the ride and the universe will take care of the rest.”

“You think so? But what about the odds?”

“Screw the odds!” came her friend’s somewhat heated response. “You’re finding your soulmate and that’s the end of it. Now tell me you finished packing.”

She eyed her suitcase critically. It looked as if a minor explosion had claimed it for its own. “I, erm, finished packing.”

“Good. Now the next time you start whining about your soulmate, I’m gonna start hitting you where it hurts, you hear me?”

She automatically rubbed her shoulder. Ever since they met in third grade, Sophie had employed this rather harsh technique of teaching her about the facts of life by hitting her each time she did something she didn’t approve of, and rewarding her when she did. The rewards usually consisted of candy, the punishment of a punch to the shoulder.

She don’t know if it really helped. She still had the tendency to overthink things, and no matter how many times Sophie tried to ‘encourage’ her to ‘think less and do more’, it didn’t seem to work.

“You know what?” suddenly suggested Soph. “Why don’t you simply forget all about boys and soulmates and all that crap and focus on having a great time with your best friend? As a rule, the best things in life only seem to come along when you least expect them, right?”

“Erm…”

“Trust me. They do. So the less you think about your perfect guy, the higher your chances of meeting him.”

It was one way of looking at things, of course, though she kinda doubted the philosophy behind it. But since she’d already spent so much time feeling miserable about guys in general and potential boyfriends in particular, she decided that perhaps Sophie had a point.

“You know what? Maybe I’ll do just that. I’ll forget all about boys and focus on having a great time.”

“That’s the spirit. And trust me, we
are
going to have a great time. In fact, never in the history of the world have two chicks had a better time than the time we’re going to be having!”

She kinda lost her there, but she liked the general idea, and when finally she’d managed to get her trunk to close—all her favorite clothes inside—she felt as if she were going on the adventure of a lifetime. And this time, no silly thoughts of boys or men were going to spoil it for her.

The plane landed with a deafening roar. Raminar stood gazing out at the gracefully gliding colossus as it touched down on the tarmac, Sam straining at the leash.

“It’s all right,” Raminar murmured to the nervous dog. “Just a big bird making a lot of noise.”

His sunglasses firmly in place, he stood in the sweltering heat, wondering if he shouldn’t return indoors and cool off. If Burke hadn’t specified the hangar as their meeting place, he wouldn’t have braved the midday heat for all the gold coin in the world. At the beach, he could take the sun and like it, too, for there was always the sea to dip into to cool his melting brow. But here in the airport, with all its concrete, glass and asphalt, the sun was relentless and barely tolerable.

Instead of grumbling about Burke’s precautions, he decided to practice his thousand-yard stare instead. Burke was a friend, after all, and didn’t deserve to be stood up. Not if he could help it, that was.

He’d been waiting for perhaps fifteen minutes, when a small group of passengers approached. Searching the faces for a sign of his friend, he was surprised to find him not amongst those present.

He quickly checked his watch. He was pretty sure this was the flight from Mumbai, and hadn’t Burke sent him a message he’d be on it?

Cursing inwardly, he gave the tourist bunch a nasty look. Most of them were dressed in loud shirts and oversized Bermudas, their hairy white stalks for legs an obvious giveaway of their Goa virginity.

As they streaked past him on their way to the terminal building, a young woman bumped into him. He started grumbling an apology when he caught sight of her flaming red hair. In spite of the heat and the long plane ride, it whisked around her head in the gentle breeze. Its copper strands were tousled, but she didn’t seem to care, her lively conversation with her friend demanding her complete attention.

That’s why she had bumped into him. She’d probably never even seen him standing there, like a rock splitting the sea of tourists.

On impact, she almost tripped and fell but he reached and clasped her arm in an iron grip before her knee hit the pavement.

She looked up at him, noticing him for the first time. Her eyes were even more remarkable than her hair. The deep emerald hue dotted with flecks of gold… He thought a person cold probably drown in eyes like that. Her cherry lips pursed as she started to mutter a few words of gratitude for preventing a nasty scrape, and for a split second, he fought the urge to claim those lips right then and there, to cover them with his own, just to see how she would respond.

But then the moment passed, and she moved past him, her friend, a rather chubby young woman wearing her hair like a helmet, giving him curious looks.

He stared after the girl as she disappeared inside the terminal building. She was lithe, petite, yet pretty, her summer dress revealing pert breasts pushed up by a pink silky bra. She’d soon loose both bra and dress, he knew, and spend the rest of the holiday prancing around in bikini, probably chased around by all the guys in the hotel where she was staying.