SEAL The Deal (5 page)

She thanked him tersely, got out her keys and unlocked the silver Lexus. She paused before sliding into the driver’s seat.

“Are you sure you’re up for this?” Devon asked him. “I’m okay if you’re not. Your sister is a special friend, probably the best friend I’ve ever had. But you don’t have to do this. I’d make it right with Sophie, somehow,” she said.

Nick admired the courage it must have taken to say that to him. He decided to try on the Being Nice uniform. The damned thing was too small, partly because of the telephone pole between his legs. But he gave it a go.

“Devon, my goal is to see my sister die with a smile on her face, if that’s possible. I think she wants us to pretend we like each other. She wants to live through us, experience something she never had herself. I can do this for her if you can.”

She thought about it and slid behind the wheel.

“All right. Then it’s agreed.” She held her hand out through the open window for him to shake. When he gripped her fingers, he tried not to squeeze too hard, but the feeling of her soft flesh in the palm of his hand was thrilling. He started to grip for a shake, and then thought about being the Nice Guy who would do something really out of character for Nick. No one was looking. He held her fingers to his lips and kissed her knuckles.

There was no mistaking her rapidly increasing pulse as his fingers touched the delicate skin under her wrist. The scent of her hand tickled his nose. The tender kiss he placed there had no beginning or end.

And he wished it could go on forever.

Chapter 5

All the way home Devon found it hard to breathe. Her throat was constricted and her mouth was dry. The hair on her arms tingled and her chest was warm. She put on and took off her jacket several times on the way home, stopping by the side of the road each time, which was ridiculous. In the end, she just left it off and cranked up the heater.

She had that feeling a great adventure was about to begin and it scared her a little, but she was still excited, felt more alive than ever. Nick was the first man she could see herself spending any time with. His touch didn’t make her flinch, but gave her an electric charge she sort of liked. Maybe it was because he was her dear friend’s brother. Maybe not.

She still felt the firmness of his callused fingers holding her hand so carefully. Although it was reassuring to know he could be gentle, it also scared her. And dammit, she wanted him to touch her again. Just that little touch had opened something frightening, but so delicious.

She was appalled when she saw herself in the hallway mirror at home. Her hair was matted down in places, and wildly out of control in others. Water droplets spotted the white shell. Her skirt was horribly wrinkled She didn’t bother to examine the suit jacket, before she threw everything into the cleaner’s bin. She stripped off her underwear and took a long hot shower.

The water was warm and the lavender shower gel sluiced down her body. With her eyes closed, she imagined what it would feel like to have his arms around her, maybe even kissing her neck. She shivered and had to look behind her to make sure he wasn’t really there. The new tingling sensations on her skin were alarming, but so curiously fascinating. Not at all like the feeling of dread and debasement she’d felt at the hands of someone who didn’t know the meaning of the word “no.” Thank God she’d gotten away.

She had always wondered if that experience had soured her on men forever. Until she met Nick, she’d been sure she would remain alone for a long time. Her therapist had said she needed to give herself enough time to allow the vivid memory to fade into the background where it belonged. And now she’d been pulled into the warm company of this handsome warrior. Something had shifted. Maybe she could explore that skeleton in her closet more closely now.

Drying off, she decided she’d do just a bit of work, and then turn in early. It had been an exhausting day. Time was certainly of the essence, so getting a head start tonight on a few things would probably help. She put lotion on her legs and arms, clipped her hair on top of her head, applied the orange nighttime moisturizer to her face, the cherry gloss to her lips, and considered her bedtime routine complete.

Normally, she’d have been excited over having a new listing. Something to crow about the next morning at the sales meeting. But no, not this time. She was so distracted, her usual focus was eluding her. She found herself staring off into a dark blue window full of evening stars, chin resting on her palm. Deliciously distracted. She’d never felt this way before.

Finally pulling her wits back together, she sat with her robe loosely gaping open, uploaded the listing information to the MLS, and sent a couple of emails to commercial agents in the area she’d worked with before.

One sent back an email right away, saying he had a buyer. He asked how she’d arrived at the value, but Devon didn’t have the energy to do an email exchange, so shut down the computer and decided to get ready for bed early.

She slipped off her robe and dove under the cream-colored sheets naked. She sifted through the wet strands of her newly washed hair as she lay back watching the shadows move across her vanilla ceiling, and thought about the day. She saw his naked back as he raised an arm up, spraying plants. Baggy cargo pants hanging just below his trim waist. The large muscles of his calves as they flexed and extended while he walked around the greenhouse area. She had to admit when he turned he’d looked sexy as hell. When he’d kissed her fingers he’d looked smoldering.

She closed her eyes, but the image only increased in intensity and made her gasp for air.

Devon knew he was a trained killer, a SEAL who was probably used to women falling all over him. And she admitted that a part of her did, too. According to Sophie, he was an experienced seducer.

She had never in her life simply held a man in her arms or felt one hold her in a loving embrace. Devon knew that the biggest problem with the arrangement Sophie had insisted on was that they were a total mismatch. There was no way their friendship could go anywhere, so why put everyone through it in the first place? It could only lead to awkwardness and heartache. Maybe her only option was to renege. Tell them she wasn’t ready. Would that be admitting defeat?

Do I dare tell him I’m a virgin? Or about my bad experience?
Would that even help? Would he suddenly find her more attractive, a conquest waiting to be captured? Or would he find her lack of skills boring compared to the many women he probably had been with? Would Sophie tell him? Should she ask her? Devon knew nothing at all about men and how they thought.

But Devon knew one thing for sure. Quitting was not in her nature. So, after thinking everything through once more, she decided she’d see this adventure through. All she needed was to set some safe boundaries and then everything would be fine. Five little dates. Throw in a little harmless playacting for Sophie’s benefit. And after her friend passed on, she’d try to focus on her career again, go back to being the woman she had been before. Confident. Self-reliant.
Definitely
not one who needed a man.

She could do it for Sophie. Her own needs could wait until the right guy appeared on her radar.

But that right guy was definitely not
Nick
.

Chapter 6

Sophie woke up slowly the next morning. Nick and Marc had already watered the nursery and done some cleanup, then had breakfast. She said she wasn’t hungry for anything but coffee, and told them she’d be spending most of the day in bed. Nick had heard her throwing up several times during the night. He planned to ask her if he could stay in her room to help out when—if—it happened again.

She was much worse today
.
The helplessness of his situation upset his stomach. He worked to push it down, just like he’d learned to do in the Middle East when headed into unknown territory filled with hostiles.

The house behind the office was decorated with the same recycled junk that was in the front. But the deep earth colors and a variety of metals, woods and granite provided some warmth and made it attractive. Nick thought perhaps she’d missed her calling and should have become an interior designer.

He especially liked the airplane propeller threaded with twinkle lights that Sophie had hung from the ceiling over the only table in the place. The plank table was also made of found objects, nearly twelve feet long, and made from rough-hewn beams that had at one time been stained turquoise and red. It was big enough that there was plenty of room for one end of the table to serve as a catchall for magazines and a pile of bills.

Several of them caught his eye. Final notices. Even a threatening letter from a mortgage company. He would definitely have remembered if she’d mentioned anything about foreclosure, but it looked like she was, indeed, on the verge of losing the property as well as the business.

Things came flooding back to him from that summer before he entered high school. He’d thought it odd he couldn’t remember Devon being in his class and didn’t know how he could have missed such a looker, but when he checked, her yearbook picture had showed her with bookish-looking glasses and, knowing himself those days, no way would he have noticed her.

Plus other things had weighed on him, and his interest in girls waned a bit that summer. His dad had been working two jobs after having been without work for nearly six months. Nick took up weeding and cutting lawns and donated his meager earnings to the family, which at first was refused. But later on, even with his father’s two jobs, his parents gratefully accepted what little he could pay. He’d sometimes gone with Sophie to buy their clothes at Goodwill, and had always checked out the store to make sure none of his friends saw him there.

But as the summer wore on, the calls started coming, then strange men and women in business suits stopped by the house and spoke quietly with his parents. One day his father announced the bank was foreclosing on the house, and they had less than a week to move out. Nick couldn’t remember ever seeing his father smile again. He’d been sure back then that if he and Sophie just worked hard enough, they could help rescue their home. But they’d had no choice but to move into a dirty two-bedroom apartment, and he and Sophie had to share one bedroom for a year.

It had broken his poor dad, who died of a heart attack soon after they’d moved, and then his mother got sick and was gone less than a year later. Nick stayed on with Sophie while she attended the local community college until she could transfer to Sonoma State. During her senior year Nick realized he wasn’t cut out for college so he joined the Navy, and later tried out for the teams. He couldn’t do anything to save his own parents physically or financially, but he could defend his country…and he had nowhere else to go. The Navy became his new family.

Stop dwelling on the past. Cut the baggage. Get your head in the game at hand. Face it.
Just like the SEALs Creed
, The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday,
life was hard and would continue to get harder, and that was all there was to it.

Nick sorted through more pink specially labeled envelopes and found a delinquent gas and electric bill for nearly a thousand dollars. He folded it quickly and slipped it into his pants pocket.

“Don’t go through my mail.” Sophie had been sitting slumped over the table, finishing her coffee.

“Sorry, sis. Thought I saw something important there.”

Marc dried his hands and walked over to Nick to take a look.

Sophie was on her feet faster than he’d thought she could move these days. “Dammit, Nick.”

She elbowed him out of the way, her robe nearly falling off her shoulders. Nick let her push him aside, but he grabbed her robe by the collar to make sure her bony flesh remained covered.

Sophie jerked out of the way and glared at him. “My mail’s private.”

“Gotta ask you, though. Some of those bills look like they’re late. You okay with the mortgage?”

“They’ll get paid when the place sells. That’s Devon’s job, so don’t fret about it.”

“What if it doesn’t sell fast enough?”

“It will,” she said over her shoulder as she hugged the pile of bills to her chest and marched off to her bedroom, slamming the door.

Marc shook his head. “Damn shame, Nick. You think she waited too long?”

He pulled out the orange electric bill notice. “I’m going to at least keep the power and lights on. Wish I could do more.”

“We should organize a work party. Get all this shit sold.”

“Good thinkin’.” Nick said.

“Have a big fire sale, like that rug place in San Diego that goes out of business every year. That kind of thing. Get all of it cleared out.”

“I think we’re gonna need more help.”

“I’ll go call Kyle and some others. They’d love a road trip up here, doing your sister a good turn. Word gets out a bunch of Navy SEALs are working the nursery without their shirts, selling potted plants and daisies. It’s bound to bring a crowd.”

“Not that high-profile shit, Marc. You know Timmons would bust us for that.”

“Not that he’d ever know. Come on, give the guys a way to blow off some steam and prance around half-naked. And they won’t know anyone here.”

“But I do, or did.”

“You mean Devon? That nice piece that’s got you dreamin’ in the shower? I fully understand you not wanting a bunch of horny Frogs hanging around her. Probably too much for her. Make her go off and do something unladylike and all.” Marc punched Nick in the arm. “Be good for the little lady, who I think needs a little man-scent in her life. Get my drift?”

Nick put aside the comment about being around Devon and forced himself to focus on the problem at hand: time was running out for Sophie. Marc might be onto something. Maybe they could earn enough money to at least make one payment. If they were close, maybe he could make up the shortfall. And maybe this kind of team bonding project was just what they needed so soon after they got back from Afghanistan. Better to schedule it now than wait until everyone had made other plans.