Sexy SEAL Box Set: A SEAL's Seduction\A SEAL's Surrender\A SEAL's Salvation\A SEAL's Kiss (30 page)

Within ten minutes, forty more people would probably have texted her back with varying degrees of shock, denial and outright horror at the idea of a Sullivan lowering himself to date a woman like Eden. One who lived in a rundown house, whose sexual encounters resulted in broken bones and who wrecked cars to rescue cats.

Who didn’t date for status.

Who liked him for him, not because of his last name.

Who made him feel like the hero she always teased him about being.

Any intention Cade had of retracting his agreement disappeared. He was going out for that drink, and he was going to make damned sure that Eden—and anyone else who might be curious—knew he was glad to spend time with her.

“Tomorrow night?” she asked, her casual tone at odds with the tension in her eyes.

“Six okay?”

She gave a tiny frown, her arched brows drawing together for a second before she nodded. Then she leaned down to grab her purse, gathered the cat closer and reached for the door handle.

“Let me,” Cade offered. Giving in to rare mischief, he grinned, then leaned across Eden’s body to open the passenger door from the inside. He let his forearm brush, ever-so-lightly, across her breasts. She gave a tiny gasp, her doe-eyes rounding with shock. Her scent wrapped around him, earthy and sweet at the same time, like honeysuckle at midnight.

He forgot about the woman in the backseat, ignored the purring mass of fur draped across Eden’s lap. All he cared about was the woman staring up at him like he’d hung the moon, lit the stars and made the sun rise when he whistled.

Without thinking, he leaned down and brushed a whisper-soft kiss over her shocked mouth.

“Thanks for the welcome home,” he murmured, immediately leaning back. He kept his expression light. Amused even. As if his own body hadn’t just gone into overdrive at the taste of her lips under his.

“Anytime,” she murmured, draping the huge cat over her shoulder and sliding from the car as if in a fog. He waited until her friend was out, too, then shifted the car into gear.

A quick glance in the rearview mirror confirmed that both women were still staring.

Cade grinned.

Maybe the next couple of weeks wouldn’t be so bad after all.

* * *

T
HERE
WAS
NO
WAY
in hell he was sticking around another couple of weeks. Cade clenched his teeth to keep the fury inside, both because spewing it would upset his grandmother, and more to the point, because he refused to let his father know he was pushing buttons.

“You need to step it up, put in more effort,” his father lectured from the crisp white sheets of his hospital bed. A chorus of beeps and buzzes accompanied his rant, medical equipment proving that a man could have a heart and still be a heartless bastard. “You’ve been doing the same thing for years now. When are you going to get a promotion? What’s it take to get a raise in that military you serve? Don’t my tax dollars pay enough for you to make a little more? Call up your ambition, boy. Push harder.”

It didn’t stop there. Cade made a show of inspecting his boots while Robert droned on.

And on and on.

And on.

It was like he was trying to spew out every demand, every put-down he could as fast as possible because he knew the drugs and his body’s need to heal would soon take over and knock him back out.

Cade wished they’d hurry the hell up.

At first, he’d listened in sympathy to the slurred words dragged down by drugs and age. He’d stared at the man lying in the hospital bed, trying to reconcile the sagging gray skin and fragile appearance with his no-bullshit father. Seeing him tapped every which way into wires and machines, for the first time in his life, Cade had felt sympathy for his old man.

Once Robert had awakened, that sympathy had lasted about five minutes.

Now, an hour later, Cade was once again asking himself if his mother, rest her soul, had bumped her head a few times before agreeing to marry such a tyrant. He’d served under some hard-asses in his years, had worked with egomaniacs and assholes. But none held a candle to his old man.

“You hear me, boy?”

“I’m not the one under medical observation,” Cade said laconically, rocking back on the heels of his boots and giving his father the easygoing smile he knew irritated him the most. “My hearing is just fine.”

The older man’s eyes, just as green as Cade’s though blurred now, narrowed.

“I wasn’t sure. You’re always being shot at, or surrounded with bombs going off all around you. You might have lost a few brain cells.”

Cade’s smile slipped a little. Nope. All he’d lost was one of his best friends. But Robert Sullivan wouldn’t give a damn about that.

Hell, the loss of his wife had only slowed him down a few weeks. If he missed her now, Sullivan-the-elder never showed it. Cade wished, for the first time in his life, that he had a little of that distance, that he could tap into that emotional void and just not care. Not feel the pain. Not carry the almost too heavy to bear weight of responsibility.

Gut clenched, he stared at the tubes pumping health into his father, focusing on the slender plastic until he could slam the lid shut on the gnawing pain.

“I’ve got to say, I find it difficult to believe you haven’t made Commander yet. You clearly aren’t applying yourself. You want me to die here, knowing my son quit for nothing? That he walked away from his familial obligations to play soldier and then didn’t get anywhere?”

Cade’s fists clenched and his blood boiled. He took a step forward, not caring that he was teetering on the edge of an explosion.

“Robert.”

That’s all it took. One word from Catherine to settle her son against his well-fluffed pillow. And, more likely her goal, to make her grandson stand down without challenging his father’s obnoxious remarks.

Cade hated that the old man got to him. He didn’t have a damned thing to prove to anyone. Still, he couldn’t shake the tension knotting his shoulders or the fury coiling in the pit of his belly. Why had he come back? Why wouldn’t his grandmother let him fly her to San Diego once in a while, or at least listen to his oft-repeated advice that she give up on that crazy illusion that they were a cozy family.

He needed to get out of here. And, if he was smart, he should go call Eden and cancel drinks. A night of thinking had provided plenty of reasons why it was a really bad idea. Mostly because all the images he’d had involved stripping those pink cotton panties off her.

“I’ll be back to pick you up in a couple hours,” he told his grandmother.

Catherine patted his hand with her own gnarled one, her expression peaceful, even with the tiny line of worry creasing her brow when she gazed at her only child. It must be a mother thing, Cade thought, shaking his head. That ability to see something positive where nobody else could.

“I have a job you need to do,” his father called out when Cade’s hand closed on the doorknob. “I loaned one of the neighbors some money with their property as collateral. Turns out they took out a loan with the bank, too. If the bank decides to foreclose, I’ve got no leverage to get my money back. So I need you to collect before that happens.”

Since there were only two tracts of land close enough to be considered neighbors, and one belonged to Cade’s grandmother, that meant Robert was talking about the Gillespie property.

Cade was surprised his fist didn’t crush the knob.

With the same caution, vigilance and care he’d take in facing an armed enemy, Cade slowly turned around.

“I’m not available for side jobs,” he said, keeping his tone light, his expression neutral. Both because he didn’t want to upset his grandmother, and yes, because he knew it’d piss his father off even more. Petty, he acknowledged, given that the guy was in a hospital bed. But he couldn’t help himself.

“You need to do this one. If you don’t the bank is going to take the property. I’ll lose my money, and the Gillespie girl will lose her home.”

“Eden borrowed money from you?”

“Eleanor did.”

Robert didn’t meet the shocked looks of his son or his mother. Looking frail again, he glared at the tubes in his hand for a second, then muttered, “She kept trying to sell me those ceramic things she makes. Erotic art, she calls it. I finally gave her the loan against the house just to get her to go away. Now she’s off, who knows where, and not paying her debts. Figures.”

Cade should be amused that someone could knock his father down a peg or two. But he was too busy worrying about the sweet girl next door.

“Eden has no idea?”

“As flaky as Eleanor is, I doubt it. I was on my way to tell Eden she was going to have to make good on her mother’s debt when all of this...” he waved his tube-tapped hand toward the machines “...happened. I’ve been a little preoccupied since.”

“You’d take the home out from under a girl you watched grow up. A neighbor? She made you cookies,” Cade said, gesturing to the tray on the sideboard with a bright red bow and get-well card.

“The bank’s the one that would be taking it out from under her. I just want to collect on what’s due to me,” Robert argued, shifting to his elbow to glare at his son. “Eleanor shouldn’t have taken that loan if she couldn’t pay it off. That’s on her, not me.”

“You’re the one trying to kick Eden out of her home.”

“The bank’s going to kick her out. I’m the one stuck in this damned hospital bed peeing into a hose while I get screwed out of ten grand.”

Maybe there was justice in the world.

It was something Cade had believed, once. Just like he’d believed he could make a difference. Now, he didn’t have much faith in anything.

He couldn’t stop his father from being a jerk, from hurting people. But he’d be damned if he’d help him.

But if he walked away, what happened to Eden? Cade remembered the state of the property. Run-down, rough looking. She didn’t have the money for upkeep, which meant she probably didn’t have enough to pay off his father. Or the bank.

He wanted to say screw it all. To get the hell out of here and go back to San Diego. For the first time since Phil had died, Cade wanted a mission. Something dangerous and intense. Something with a lot of guns, escalating violence and hopefully a shot at a little hand-to-hand combat.

“Cade,” Catherine said, her quiet voice still loud enough to be heard over the sudden beeps and buzzing of the machines monitoring Robert. “That sweet girl is going to need help. Someone has to step in and keep the bank, and others, from taking her property. You’ll take care of this for her until Eleanor gets back to pay her debts, won’t you?”

Like a plug had been pulled on his fury, Cade sighed.

What was it about his grandmother? She never raised her voice, never said a harsh word. Yet nobody could say no to her. Including him.

“Sure, yeah, I’ll take care of things,” he promised quietly.

What else could he do? It was Eden. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, let her be tossed out of her house. It was the only home she’d ever known. Hell, until her mother had taken up mobile living, it was the only home the last four generations of her family had ever known.

He had to find a way to save it. To save her.

And, maybe, just maybe thinking of her as a mission, as a personal responsibility, would keep his hands off her sexy ass.

4

“I
S
THIS
TOO
MODEST
?”

Eden turned one way, then the other, trying to see how she looked. Her bureau mirror only showed the top two-thirds of her body, though. So she couldn’t tell if the borrowed skirt was sexy, slutty or simply stupid.

“Shouldn’t you be asking if it’s too revealing? Or,” Bev leaned her head sideways and squinted, “if you should be wearing underwear?”

Eden clapped both hands on her butt cheeks, checking to make sure they weren’t hanging out. The skirt wasn’t that short, was it? After assuring herself it hit mid-thigh, she glared at her friend.

“Just because it doesn’t leave panty lines doesn’t mean a thong isn’t underwear,” she chided. And she wasn’t about to ruin the look of her cute little black skirt with panty lines. Short, but not so much that she’d be in danger of flashing her goods, it fit like a glove, and showed off the benefits of being able to eat anything and everything and not gain an ounce. Her black blouse billowed, making her feel like a sexy poet with its wide ruffles and full sleeves.

Not a bad
just drinks, not really a date, but don’t you wish it were
look, she decided. She leaned closer to the mirror to check her makeup. Smoky but subtle, like the magazines suggested. Glistening pink on her lips, just a hint of shimmer on her cheekbones and an extra coat of mascara.

She looked like herself, but not.

Exactly what she’d been hoping for.

This was it. Her chance to make one of her favorite fantasies come true. To make Cade Sullivan see her as more than a rescue operation, a charity case. A cute pet he needed to pull from the occasional tree.

“So?” she asked again, giving Bev an expectant look.

“You look great,” the other woman said, sitting cross-legged on Eden’s bed wearing blue jeans and a frown.

The bedroom, like the rest of the house, was a little worn. The last time the paint had been refreshed, Eden had been thirteen and going through her Grateful Dead phase. Thankfully, the years had faded the virulent purple to a smoky amethyst. Evening light, soft and gentle, wafted through the open windows, bringing with it the occasional bark from the barn. Eden had three dogs kenneled in what she affectionately called her veterinary hospital, but what most everyone else called a wreck. She’d spent the afternoon giving them, the horse and the goat extra play time and exercise to make up for the fact that she wouldn’t be down to visit later. Because, please-oh-please fingers crossed tight, it’d be too late when she got home.

“This is the first time I’ve ever actually spent any time with Cade. He actually seems like a nice guy,” Bev said, her tone implying he was pure poison. “Are you sure you want to go out with him?”

Trying to figure out what to do with her hair, because hanging flat was so boring, it took Eden a few seconds to take that in.