SEAL'd Perfection The Complete Collection: A Navy SEAL Romance (2 page)

Is he there now? At a sandwich cart?
I hadn’t seen one on my way in, but I wasn’t looking either. My mind had been distracted with other things. I fished my phone out of my purse and dialed Mitch’s cell phone. There was no point in going on a block wide wild goose chase if he was in a meeting or with a client. My plans for afternoon seduction might have to wait.

The sound of something chirping pulled me from my mental plans to reschedule, and I turned back to look at Mitch’s door. The sound was coming from inside…

“Shit!” A hissed whisper from the other side.

What the…?

I knocked on the door. “Mitch? Honey, is that you?”

There was no answer, but as I pressed my ear closer, I heard the rustling of papers and frantic footsteps.
Two
sets of footsteps. My stomach rolled as a sinking desperation grabbed a hold.

“Mitch? It’s Kat, let me in!” I said, my voice louder as I pounded my palm against the door. Wait a second…hadn’t this door been made of glass before? I scrunched my nose, trying to remember. It
had
been. The last time I’d visited, shortly after Mitch had opened the new office, all the rooms had doors that matched the front door, frosted glass. But the door under my hand was solid wood. “Mitch! Now!” I screamed, my voice cracking slightly.

I raised my foot, about to start kicking, when the door flung open, and I tottered in my heels for a moment before bursting into the room. Mitch was standing there, his hand still on the opposite door handle, with a twinge of red in his cheeks and his eyes wide as he looked me up and down. “Kat! Sorry about that, darling, I was wrapping up a conference call,” he explained, his voice a little faster than his normal cadence.

I stared at him for a moment, and then pushed past him into the office. It appeared empty, but I’d heard two sets of footsteps moments before. There was no way Mitch was the only one here. All at once, a thousand clues came flashing to the surface, blaring at me like big, red warning lights. All the signs I should’ve noticed, the things I should’ve been paying attention to. Late night calls in his study, last minute trips, the long nights, the secret credit cards I’d found that were in his name only.

“Mitch?” My voice quivered. “How could you do this?”

His eyes flicked to the closet—giving everything away. Confirming my darkest suspicions.

My body sagged, but I crossed the room, towards the closet. Mitch raced behind me, jumping in front of the door before I could get a hold of the knob. “Kat, don’t—”

My eyes flicked to his, holding his brown eyes through the misting that blurred my vision. “How could you?”

He tried to grab for my hands but I jerked away, so violently that I stumbled backwards a step. “Kat, come on, let’s talk about this…” he pleaded.

“Open the door, Mitch.” I gulped back the lump in my throat and pointed at the closet. “Now.”

He sighed, and I could see the gears of his mind turning.

“Mitch, please…” I whispered.

He sighed and opened the door, and my vision worked in slow motion as his secretary Hannah, came into view. I’d met her once before, at a dinner once upon a time. She was young, maybe in her early twenties, with long blonde hair, full, red lips, and loads of dark eye makeup. She was wearing a skin tight dress that left little to the imagination, hugging her every curve, and her lipstick and hair were smudged, and her hands were twitching nervously as she clasped them together in front of her. As soon as she was exposed, her eyes cut to Mitch, looking for instruction.

I managed to tear my eyes away from her long enough to look back at Mitch. “Really, Mitch?
This
is what you want?” I asked, considering the trembling girl again, making notes of the differences between us.

Mitch looked absolutely frantic. “It’s not what you think, Kat. Please, hear me out!”

“You have a woman—a girl—hiding in your closet and you locked me out of your office. Mitch, don’t lie to me. I’m not stupid! Maybe I have been, ignoring the signs and pretending the distance between us wasn’t a problem, but that was all fixable! This—this isn’t. I mean, how long has this even been going on?” I paused, reconsidering my question. I put my hands up, blocking him. “No, you know what? I don’t even want to know.”

“It was a mistake, Kat, a moment of weakness! That’s it!” Mitch said, locking his eyes with mine, disregarding the girl in the closet. “Please, Kat, let me explain.” He reached for me again, this time getting a grip on my forearm.

“No!” I yelled, turning away, and ripping my arm out of his grip as though he’d burned my skin. “I’m not some client that you can use your sales voodoo on. I won’t be bought! This,” I said, tugging the massive diamond ring from my finger, “is over.
We
, are over.”

I threw the ring on his desk before racing out of the room as fast as I could without falling on my face. I barely made it to the elevator without spraining my ankle, and only once inside the metal box did I allow myself to break—freeing the hot river of tears as I sagged against the wall.

Somehow, on the ride down to the lower level, I pulled it together enough to keep my head held high as I stalked back to the car—hoping that Mitch and his little whore were watching from his office window. I shifted my focus back to the only thing that mattered—getting home to Jax and making a new life for us.

Two Years Later…

It was the Monday from hell. Jax was screaming at the top of his lungs at Mickey, our Golden Retriever, who was barking happily, thinking that Jax was playing the game of tug-o-war with him, when in reality…the three-year-old just wanted his favorite stuffed bunny back in one piece. As I’d been in the middle of breaking up the fight, the toaster had gone rogue and the smell of burnt toast filled the house. So, with no breakfast, a slobber covered stuffed bunny, and clothes that I’d been forced to pull from the dryer even though they were still damp, I hauled Jax up on one hip and headed next door to drop him off with Hilda, my saint disguised as a babysitter. She ran a small daycare from her home and had fallen in love with Jax from the day we moved in and offered me a ridiculous discount to watch him when I went to work and then again, three nights a week, when I went to school.

“It’s okay, Jaxy, bunny will be okay. Mickey was just playing,” I tried to explain to the inconsolable toddler as we hurried across the postage stamp yard in front of our townhouse. Regardless of my explanation, Jax only cried harder as he picked at the munched ear of his favorite toy. As I sprinted, I silently prayed that Hilda would be handy with a needle and thread to mend it before Jax went into a full-on melt down.

Hilda was waiting outside for us and broke into a huge smile as soon as she saw baby Jax and the stress wrapped around my stomach loosened. At least I knew he’d be safe and in good hands while I was gone. “Good morning,” she called.

“Morning Hilda,” I said, struggling to hold onto Jax who began flapping his arms, trying to reach for Hilda. I smiled and passed him off. “So, we had a little bunny emergency this morning, bunny might need a trip to the hospital,” I said, throwing Hilda a wink as Jax showed her the place where the ear was pulling away from the head, a tiny swath of cotton exposed.

“Well you’ve come to the right place, Mr. Jax. Bunny will get the best care possible,” Hilda responded, snuggling Jax close.

I pressed a kiss to Jax’s tawny head. “You hear that, kiddo? Ms. Hilda’ll fix him up while mama is at work.”

Jax waved a hand at me as I backed a few steps down the drive. “Thanks Hilda, you’re an angel!” I called, going back across the small yard that separated our attached homes and began fumbling for my keys.

“Have a good day, mama!” Hilda said, helping Jax wave at me as I fired up my old hatchback and pulled out onto the street. As I drove away, my eyes welled up—as they always did—wishing I could stay home with Jax.

Like I
used
to…

“No,” I shook my head. “Nope, nope, not today,” I scolded myself. I refused to let myself get lost in the tangle of memories and pointless wishing that things could be different. That was my old life, and I was never going back to that again.

It was startling how much my old life still haunted me. It had been two years since the day I’d found out Mitch was cheating on me with his secretary, Hannah Neal. In a way, it felt like a bad dream, and if it weren’t for Jax, I wondered if I’d even think about the dirt bag at all. As it was, we had gone through a nasty, drawn out divorce trial and custody battle, and not two months after it was settled, Mitch and Hannah had run off to Maui and eloped on the beach.

In the end, I’d walked away with joint custody of Jax, just enough child support to get by on, and a reversion back to my maiden name. I was Katherine Anne Ryan again, and as far as I cared, would remain that way for the rest of my life. Despite Mitch’s rush back down the aisle, and everyone’s prodding that I move on and start dating again, I had little desire to ever go down that path again.

Not that I had time anyways. After the divorce became final, I’d been forced to take a job at a small diner, just to make up the difference between what child support would cover and what I needed to keep food on the table and the electric bill paid on time. Meanwhile, Mitch and Hannah had recently upgraded the house I’d shared with him for nearly five years, adding on an extensive horse barn and mother-in-law home on the back of the property. Mitch had more money than he knew what to do with, but that had also afforded him a far superior legal team during the divorce, and made sure that I didn’t get a penny more than I needed to survive. And then, like clockwork, allowed him to swoop in and spoil Jax with anything a small child could imagine, including our dog Mickey, who had originally been adopted to stay with Mitch and Hannah, but he and Jax had become inseparable—unless a stuffed toy was at stake--so like it or not, I also ended up with 50/50 custody of a Golden Retriever mix.

When I wasn’t working my ass off in the diner, I went to school three nights a week to get interior design training. That had been the only positive to come out of the divorce, it had forced me to take a long look at my life and re-examine everything that I wanted from my life, and although my degree was in finance, I’d quickly discovered that I wasn’t made for a 9 to 5 job in the corporate world. Along the way, I’d discovered my new passion and had somehow managed to get Mitch to pay for my schooling as a condition on our settlement.

“Kat! Thank God you’re here!” my co-worker, Patrice, hollered at me before the doorbell had even finishing ringing as I pushed into the diner. At the sound of her frantic call, I wanted to pivot on my heel and march right back outside again. She wasn’t the type to stress easily, so if her tone of voice was in line with whatever was going on behind the counter, I knew that I didn’t want to deal with it.

I took a deep breath, releasing it slowly as I counted to three in my head, before going to find her. She was standing at the far end of the counter and beckoned me over with a “hurry up” wave of her hand. “What’s the big emergency?” I asked, approaching her slowly. “No one’s even here yet. Don’t tell me Harry forgot to bring in the cash drawer again.”

“No, no, that’s not it. Look!” She pointed out the window and I followed her gaze across the street where a large, yellow moving truck was pulled alongside the curb in front of a small retail space that had been vacant for months. It had been a kids clothing shop once upon a time, I remembered buying some of Jax’s baby stuff there, but since the owner had moved to a bigger place, the shop had remained empty, like the two other vacated shops on either side. Harry, the owner of the diner, often lamented that if the businesses in the strip mall kept going out, he’d have to retire early and move to Boca due to the lack of foot traffic.

Patrice and I watched as workers unloaded a variety of equipment from the truck. I strained to see what they were moving in. A few wingbacks, black leather chairs followed a large twisted metal sculpture, and then a large chest that looked like it was used to store power tools.

We were still gawking, and both jumped, startled by the sound of the doorbell chiming near the front door. “I have to go put my hair up and get my apron,” I told her as I scurried back to the kitchen where there was a small section of wall set up for employee belongings. Nothing was locked up, but we each had a hook where we could hang our purses, coats, and aprons. I threw my long hair into a ponytail, smoothing the top to pat down any fly-aways, and then slipped on my apron, tying it behind me on autopilot as I headed back to the front of the small diner.

It was nearing seven o’clock, and our morning rush was about to begin. We were nearly the only place in our part of town where people could stop and get a hot breakfast before shuffling off to work.

I grabbed the pot of coffee, on my way to the hostess station. Patrice had seated a few tables of regulars, and I smiled at each in turn as I wove through, filling coffee mugs. When I reached the last occupied table, I stopped short, not recognizing the hulking form sitting with his back to me—a very defined, muscled back—I noted, as I started again and stepped to the table. Normally, during the weekdays, we saw the same crowd over and over again. The back I stared at was
not
a regular. Not by a long shot.

“Good morning,” I chirped, raising the pot of coffee that was nearly depleted. “Coffee?”

The stranger looked up at me and my heart jumped into my throat. The man sitting in the booth was striking—his blue eyes pierced mine and stole the breath right out of my lungs. He had sandy brown hair, touched with strands of gold that made me wonder if he worked outside in the sun. His skin was a light brown, and smooth, except for a thin layer of stubble that covered a chiseled jaw line. His shoulders were broad and strong, the muscles easily displayed through the thin, black muscle tee he was wearing. But, perhaps his most intriguing feature was the copious amount of black ink covering nearly every inch of his arms, each set stopping neatly at the wrist. I didn’t mean to stare, but couldn’t tear my eyes from tracing the lines of each tattoo as it blended seamlessly into the next design. Most of it looked tribal, dark, and dangerous.