The SEAL's Best Man (Special Ops: Homefront Book 2) (2 page)

“I’ll help too,” Bess chimed in just as she
heard her baby start wailing in the distance. Having just turned a year old,
little Abigail’s naps were getting shorter every day. Bess set down her
spatula. “Well, I’ll help when
she
lets me. Can someone watch this? I
think there’s a diaper with my name on it.”

“I’ll get this one,” Jack offered.

Maeve’s eyes couldn’t resist following
him as his long strides took him out of the kitchen on a mission. There was
something undeniably sexy about a man who looked like
that
—and was
willing to take on diaper duty.

“I don’t know…” Lacey sank into a kitchen
chair, a sign to Maeve that her resolve was crumbling.

Maeve moved in for the kill, feeling her
old self again with Jack out of the room. “No arguments. We’ll talk about it
over dinner. Make a few calls. All I need is a head count. The rest is easy.”

And it could be easy, she convinced
herself. Weddings didn’t have to be the extravaganza that she had barely
survived. Her wedding had been filled with as much drama as her subsequent
divorce.

For Lacey, it would be classy. Simple and
elegant. A celebration of love. Maeve smiled, picturing her best friend and
closest confidant in a flowing white gown, eyes filled with hope.

Despite the loss of her job, Maeve
actually felt a small surge of excitement… until Jack walked back into the
kitchen, cradling a baby against his chest.

And Maeve’s heart broke from the glimpse
of an impossible future.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she
dared to meet his eyes. “Umm, Jack, do you think we could get the Navy Chapel?”

 “You’ll never get it. That place
gets booked up a year in advance.”

As he bent to set Abigail in her playpen,
Maeve couldn’t help noticing how his uniform showed off his perfect butt. Couldn’t
the guy have some flaw she could focus on right now? She sighed. “But Mick’s a
freaking war hero. Can’t they bump someone for us?”

Lacey and Jack exchanged a look.

Maeve rolled her eyes. “Okay, okay. Bad
idea. We can count out any of the churches downtown, too. Anyplace historic
will be taken that month. What about Eagle’s Point?”

“On our budget? Are you kidding? That
would eat up our down payment before we even cut the cake. Besides, I guarantee
their ballroom will be booked up every Saturday in June.”

“True.” Maeve deleted Eagle’s Point from
the list she was already tapping into her iPhone. “I do like the waterfront twist
though. How about at Edith’s house?” Maeve knew there was little that Edith
Baker would not do for Mick. She and her late husband had been his sponsors at
the Academy his plebe year. She was still a mother hen to him.

Mick shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to
put her out like that.”

Setting down her phone, Maeve sighed.
“She’d love it. You know she would.”

Lacey piped in. “Can’t do it there anyway.
Edith’s neighborhood has too many covenants. It would have to get approved by
the Homeowners’ Association and that would never happen in time.”

Glancing out her window, Maeve eyed her
backyard. It certainly wasn’t the size of Edith’s—which practically
qualified for its own zip code. But maybe… “What about here?”

“Here?” Biting her lip, Lacey stood to
look out the back window.

“Yeah. I could fire cannons off the back
porch and no one would care in our community. And you probably don’t want a
huge wedding anyway, right, Lacey? I mean, how many people are we talking?”

“It’s up to Lacey,” Mick said, resting
his arm low around his fiancée’s waist.

“Not true, Mick.” Jack grabbed a stack of
plates from the cupboard. “You’re in the Navy. Navy lists get big fast. You
invite one person from a wardroom, and you have to invite them all. This place
will be crawling with SEALs.”

Maeve raised her eyebrows.
Crawling
with SEALs?
She could sell tickets to single women in Annapolis and finance
Lacey’s entire honeymoon from it.

Bess narrowed her eyes on the grin spreading
across Maeve’s face. “Don’t even say it, Maeve.”

Wide-eyed, Maeve protested, “What?”

Mick pulled out silverware and followed
Jack onto the back porch. “It won’t be as bad as that. Most the people I know
will be OCONUS in June.”

“OCONUS?” Maeve set down the napkins.
“Mind a translation for us mere civilians?”

“Outside the Continental U.S.” He laid
out the forks and knives alongside the plates.

Maeve took Lacey by the hand and guided
her out the door of the screened porch. “Picture it, Lacey. It’s flat right
there by the water’s edge. We can rent a dance floor and put it down there. Put
chairs on it for the ceremony.” Excited now, she touched her fingers to her
lips and thoughtfully gazed back at her house. “Then we could have guests
retreat to the house for cocktail hour, while someone whisks away the chairs
and sets up tables off to the side for dinner.”

Jack darted back up the stairs of the
porch and turned to them. “I’m thinking we could do the sword arch here, and
then you’d walk down to the dance floor for your first dance.”

Lacey clasped Mick’s hand. “That would be
beautiful.”

“It’ll be a breeze. I’ll have help from
Bess and—Jack.” Maeve nearly sputtered his name, wondering what it would
be like to plan a wedding with a man who was, right now, sending her hormones
into overdrive. “Let me do this for you. It won’t be lavish, but any wedding we
throw for you will beat City Hall. Do you want us to?”

Lacey released her fiancé to hug Maeve.
“I do.”

Maeve grinned. “Good practice.”

***

The clock had said it was just past
midnight, but Maeve felt like it was barely seven o’clock. She couldn’t sleep;
hadn’t even bothered trying. Instead of counting sheep, she’d be counting unpaid
bills in her head—gas, electric, cell phone, cable—and wondering
where the money would come from.

Her house, inherited from her grandmother
two years ago, didn’t generate anything more than a tax bill twice a year. But
still, taxes for waterfront property in Annapolis were grueling. Worth every
penny though, she was reminded as she stepped out the door from her screened-in
back porch to the yard. Tilting her neck back, she drank in the sight of the
stars above her.

A breeze caught her nightgown and she
cuddled it closer to her body as she walked onto her wooden dock. It was a
perfect May night, and she could easily spend the next hour or two just soaking
in the warm spring breeze that hinted of the summer that still awaited her. The
moon’s reflection in the water drew her eyes upward again to the calming
presence of the stars. Twinkling their light down upon the house, Maeve
sometimes thought of her beloved Gram up there, still watching over her
granddaughter now, just as she had in life.

“What are you doing out here?”

Maeve’s heart jumped in her chest at the
sound of Jack’s voice behind her.

“Jack, you scared me.” Instinctively, she
wrapped her arms across her chest. “I didn’t know you were still here.”

“Abigail fell asleep in my arms. I was
afraid if I put her down, she’d wake up.”

“Liar. You just love holding her.”

“Caught.” He stepped onto the dock. “Truth
be known, I fell asleep in the rocker holding her. Nothing makes me sleepier
than having a warm baby snoozing on my chest. All these nieces and nephews I
have, and I kept missing the chance to really enjoy them when they were babies.”
Joining her at the end of the dock, he sat down, his feet nearly touching the
water below him. “She’s out like a light in her crib now, though.” He brushed off
the boards of the dock beside him. “Why don’t you sit?”

Maeve shook her head. “My robe’s too
thin. I’ll be picking splinters out of my thighs.”

Jack laughed. “Well, we can’t have that.”
He pulled his shirt off and spread it out on the dock beside him.

Maeve just stood there, slack-jawed,
wondering how a mere crescent moon could give off enough light to showcase such
a perfect torso. “Might want to put that shirt back on. The water is beginning
to boil around you.”

Jack tilted his head. “A rare compliment
from you. I’ll have to mark this day in my calendar.”

Maeve gave in and sat on the shirt beside
him. She noticed how it was still warm from his body heat and somehow that
thought gave her legs goose bumps. “Am I really that hard on you?”

“Definitely.”

“I’m sorry about that. It’s just me. I
get too sarcastic sometimes I guess.”

“It’s a defense mechanism.”

“Okay, Dr. Phil. So what am I defending
against?” Maeve asked.

“Your unbearable attraction to me.”

No shit, Sherlock
. “Oh really?”

“Sure. I get that from all women.”

Maeve laughed at his cocky grin, which
suddenly faded.

“Seriously, though, Maeve.” His eyes met
hers. “What was going on with you tonight?”

“What do you mean?”

“You weren’t yourself.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You barely looked me in the eye all
night. And you got creamed in Scrabble. That’s not like you. You’re distracted
or something.”

Maeve pulled her eyes from his, her heart
rate quickening. For a split-second, she actually considered telling him the
truth—that she had been flustered by having his face so close to hers, feeling
that charge of anticipation, believing they would actually kiss. Getting lost
in his eyes, the same way she had eight years ago. She had found herself
wanting more.

But some truths were better left untold. “I
lost my job today,” she offered instead.

“What? Oh, Maeve, I’m sorry. Why didn’t
you say anything at dinner?”

“Lacey and Mick were so happy and
excited. I didn’t want to ruin the evening. I’ll tell them tomorrow, I guess.”
Maeve stretched her legs in front of her, noticing she was overdue for a
pedicure. Another expense that would have to be cut.

“You should have said something. Your
friends are here to support you, you know.”

His arm draped around her shoulders
loosely, nothing more than a friendly gesture, she knew. But tonight, his touch
made her melt. Uncomfortable, she didn’t know if she should pull away, or succumb
to the urge to snuggle closer.

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s my own
fault, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

Maeve frowned. “I quit. I found out that
I got passed over for that partnership, and I just lost my temper and walked
out.”

“I don’t blame you. You were too good for
that place anyway.”

“Well, if I had half a brain, I would
have bit my tongue till I had another job lined up. It’s twice as hard finding
a job when you don’t have one, you know.”

“Why not go into business for yourself?”

“Too risky.”

“It’s what you’ve always wanted to do,
though.”

It bothered her that he knew this. Not
once, ever, had she uttered that dream to him, yet he knew—the same way
he could effortlessly complete her sentences.

“Right now I just have to find something
to pay the bills.” She glanced back at her dimly lit house, looking peaceful
along the edge of the water. “Or I’ll be telling Lacey to list the house.”

“Over my dead body. That house is your
soul, Maeve.”

She smiled, comforted that someone knew
how much her home meant to her. “Yeah. My Gram would roll over in her grave. It
would be a last resort, believe me. But the money would certainly give me some
float till I got a job.”

“You’re not selling. I won’t let that
happen. None of us will. You have to stop thinking of yourself as alone in
this.”

“Could you do me a favor?” Glancing at
him, she noticed how his face had been flawlessly sculpted to frame his eyes. She
thought how much she’d like to distract herself by begging him to take her
right now. With his lovemaking skills—which she remembered so
well—she’d be guaranteed to forget about losing her job.

“Name it.”

Her eyes met his, and she was lost. Make
me forget, she wanted to say.
Take me in your arms and kiss away the image
of each pesky bill sitting on my desk.

She could use a distraction in the form
of a man like Jack right now. But the friendship she relied on would
disintegrate. And she needed that more.

She pressed her lips together a moment,
holding back the words she longed to say, then finally spoke. “Let’s just not
talk about it right now. Let’s just enjoy the stars.”

He squeezed her tighter. “You got it. Just
remember I’m here for you. We all are.”

Shutting her eyes, she let herself rest
her head against his shoulder, savoring the sound of the water lapping against
the dock and the feel of his strength against her. And almost content in the
friendship she shared with him.