The SEAL’s Secret Lover (12 page)

“One more day.”

“And one more night.”

His voice was low, rough, nearly inaudible in the coffee shop’s noisy morning crowd, but there was no mistaking his tone, the desire.

“One more night,” she agreed. She’d figure out a way to explain it to Grannie. “Then I go home.”

At the word
home
, regret flashed over his face before he smoothed it away. Her heart was twitching and thumping in her chest as emotions tumbled through her. One more magical vacation day, one more stolen night with her secret lover tumbled together with mounting regret and imminent loss. Underneath it all was a question she could no longer ignore.

When would Keenan go home?

*   *   *

The day held an urban magic feel, where floors literally opened to reveal ancient Roman cisterns, and streets tapered into narrow alleys that had been inhabited for two thousand years. They started with the Hagia Sofia, marveling at the building’s Byzantine architecture and rich decorations, tracing the holes in thousand-year-old marble crosses worn through by countless pilgrims’ fingers. It was a short walk past the Hippodrome to the minarets, domes, and soaring arches of the Blue Mosque. They removed their shoes and covered their hair to step inside and stare at the intricate mosaics.

“I can’t imagine the planning that went into building this,” Rose murmured to Keenan.

A grin curved the corners of his mouth. “You could pull it off.”

“I’d love the challenge,” she said, then looked around. “We’ve lost Grannie again.”

They found her outside, helping a group of schoolgirls practice their English until their teacher gathered them up and brought them inside. Rose gathered her own chicks and followed Keenan to a dive of a restaurant. Keenan knew the family who ran the place, and the food was delicious, spicy and piping hot. Then they were off again, wandering through the Spice Market before boarding the boat for an hour-long cruise down the Bosphorus. The afternoon sun glinted off the modern buildings and picked out remnants of the city walls, hidden in the streets.

“I can see why you live here,” Rose said. They stood elbow-to-elbow at the rail of the cruise boat, drifting by trees bursting with pink cherry blooms amid elaborate mansions and crowded row housing. The sky was an unreal shade of blue, the sun glinted in the spray tossed from the waves. Keenan looked at home with the wind in his face and the boat’s motion.

He shrugged. “It’s convenient.”

“Could you live anywhere?” she asked, testing, probing. Curious.

He turned from examining the water to look at her. “This is a good location for work.”

“Oh.” She watched a yacht cruise by, the occupants loftily ignoring everyone else around them. “But you could do other work.”

“I have a fairly limited skill set,” Keenan said. “It’s a good skill set, don’t get me wrong, but there aren’t many uses for it in the civilian world.”

“I don’t know about that,” she said, and turned to rest her elbows on the railing. “We’re hiring a Director of Security.”

He did her the courtesy of maintaining a straight face. Jack had flat out laughed at her when she dropped that hint. “Keeping an office park secure?”

“It’s a little more complex than that. We have storage facilities and pipelines all over the country,” she said, matter-of-fact. “Assets worth hundreds of millions of dollars, protected from the threat of domestic terrorism largely by being in the middle of nowhere. It’s not just protecting a cube farm full of office drones, although that would also be part of the job.”

“Based in Lancaster?”

“Lots of travel, but yes. Jack’s there, so you’d know someone,” she said somewhat disingenuously.

“And you. And your grandmother, Marian, and Florence. Do I need a sponsor to join the Lancaster Garden Club?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, following his teasing line. “It’s a rigorous application process. They don’t let just anyone into the Lancaster Garden Club.”

“What on earth are you saying, Rose?” Grannie asked, making her way along the railing to join them. “Anyone can join the Garden Club. We’d love to get more young people excited about gardening. Are you thinking about it?”

“I am,” she said, her gaze on Keenan’s face.

“I thought you kill cacti.”

“I can learn,” she said, holding his gaze. “With the right people at my side, I can learn anything.”

Chapter Eight

He took her to dinner, a nice dinner at a nice restaurant in the shadow of the Galata Tower, because the Babes said the “young people” should enjoy themselves on Rose’s last night in Istanbul. He sensed Grannie’s hand in that, felt embarrassed for a moment, then realized that anyone who watched Rose all but raise Jack Powell couldn’t be shocked by much.

Even at the end of a long day of shepherding the Babes through what he thought was the coolest city on earth, and he’d been in enough to be able to make that distinction with authority, Rose looked more relaxed than she had when he first saw her, gripping her mobile like it was the only thing between her and a long fall off a steep cliff. She traced the rim of her wine glass and smiled at him. Held her hand over it when he offered to pour more. Smiled at him with an emotion he simply didn’t recognize, one that took him ages to identify, until something primitive, probably left over from a time before memory, when he was a babe in arms surfaced into his consciousness.

It was tenderness. Not maternal cooing, or feigned sympathy and fussing, but Rose’s unique awareness of him as a man, her strength, her vulnerability, all melding into a single look cast across the white linen tablecloth, lit by candlelight and the spring sunset. He just didn’t know how to respond to it. Nothing about him was tender, soft, kind. There had never been any need for that, much less any room for it, in his life. He’d never had it. Didn’t know how to respond to it. His ignorance frustrated him, leaving him right back where he’d started, in Istanbul, but it went further back than that, to the choices he’d made at seventeen, to a future he couldn’t imagine, let alone live. To break the spell, he looked at his watch.

“Do you have somewhere to be?” Rose asked, curious, not irritated.

“I’ve got to feed my neighbor’s cat,” he admitted. “She’s working late tonight. The cat’s basically a stray she’s adopted.”

“How very domestic of you,” she said with a smile. “What’s his name?”

“Asra calls him Edjer, which means ‘dragon.’ I call him Motherfucker,” he said. Then, over her laughter, he added, “He’s a street-smart tom who wins all the fights with the other neighborhood cats and scratches me when I feed him.”

Her smile broadened. “That’s the perfect excuse to invite me back to your place. To meet your neighbor’s evil cat.”

He was in trouble. So much trouble. He should just end this now, get out while the getting was good, while he still had his uncertainty. They’d made no promises, shared nothing more than a few days and his bed. It was simple.
I really should get some sleep. I might get a call.
“Better than asking if you want to see my etchings?”

“Much better, given that I don’t know what etchings are.”

“Come back to my place.”

“I have to be back by five a.m.,” she said, snagging her purse. “That will give me time to shower and pack before our cab takes us to the airport.”

The sound that came out of his chest sounded like a chuckle, but really it was all the air leaving his lungs, because that was the exact moment he knew he was falling in love with her. With Jack Powell’s sister, sexily pragmatic, or pragmatically sexy. In charge. Living on another continent.

Her hand in his, he led her through brick-paved streets lined with brightly painted townhouses converted into apartments, up the stairs to his top-floor unit. A kitchen lined the wall by the door, and a bed, unmade, sat near the window. A tiny table with two chairs occupied what little space remained between the kitchen and the bed.

The bed.

Tonight was different. Tonight wasn’t in an anonymous hotel room, but in what passed for his home. Light from the full moon poured through the French door that opened to his balcony, falling in a wide strip across the scarred wood floors and the bed. He crossed the room, opened the door, and made a soft
ch-ch-ch
sound. With a rough
mrowr
, Edjer aka Motherfucker, mostly black with a white chest and stripe up his nose, leapt agilely from the wicker baker’s rack on Asra’s balcony to the railing of his, and from there to his floor. He shook some dry cat food into a bowl, and was rewarded with a hiss and a swipe. “You’re welcome, Motherfucker,” he muttered, Rose’s soft laugh masking the words.

He turned around to find her standing right behind him. She reached for his wrist and drew him to the bed, gently urging him to sit down. Then she straddled him. His hands gripped her hips, steadying her on the mattress while she kissed him, slow and hot and deep, her tongue stroking his until he was hard, desperate. His arms wrapped around her slender back.

She tugged his sweater over his head, then pushed him flat on his back so she could unbutton his shirt, kiss her way down his chest and abdomen to his pants. She slid to her knees on the floor and unzipped his pants, gently easing his stiff cock from his underwear. He lifted his hips to let her tug his pants to his thighs, then pulled the elastic from her ponytail, and remained braced on his elbows to watch.

Blow jobs done wrong felt perfunctory, a trade for something she wanted later. Blow jobs done right made him feel like a god receiving his due. They hit every single one of his buttons.

This one, with Rose, was done right, and more.

She turned the tables on him, this time forcing him to slow down, using her hands and mouth in flowing, slick, alternating movements until he was hard enough to drive nails, and trembling with desire.

“Come here,” he said, whiskey-voiced, brusque.

“I’m not d—” she said.

“You’re done,” he said, cutting her off. He gripped her upper arm and pulled her back up on the bed. A quick flurry of hands bared her to the waist. She wriggled out of her panties while he sheathed himself.

Watching her hold her skirt out of the way, center herself over his cock, and slide down, down, down until he was as deep inside her as he could get, sent molten heat pulsing through his veins, electrifying his nerves. Her head dropped back, lifting her breasts, tipped with rosebud nipples. He sat up, wrapped his arms around her waist, and hunched over, lifting his hips to drive deeper inside, licking at the taut peaks.

She gave a fierce laugh and started to ride him, slick, rhythmic movements that worked the head of his cock over that sweet spot inside her. He would have sworn steam was rising from his skin, scented with sex and sweat and her slick juices. He could taste it on her skin, in the air.

Everything was exactly the same, except it was entirely different. Her hair tumbled around their faces, getting into his mouth, sticking to her cheekbone, to his beard. She watched him, eyes closing occasionally when a particular angle made her quiver, inside and out, but for the most part, she watched him. Her eyes held a tender heat he didn’t recognize but that called to him deep inside, a clarion call, that cracked him open as he came apart in her arms.

When he returned to the bed, she was fast asleep. He set his alarm for zero four thirty hours, and lay down beside her to watch the moon cross the sky and dip out of sight. On the balcony across the alley, Edjer/Motherfucker, wide-eyed and cat-curious, peered into the room, clearly wondering what the hell he was doing.

He wondered the same thing himself.

*   *   *

“Rose. Rose, sweetheart, wake up.”

It was time to go. She knew before she opened her eyes that Keenan was beside her, his lips against her ear. “I’m awake,” she said groggily. “I’m going.”

He was silent while she rose and dressed, then gathered her shoulder bag from the chair. Torn, she looked at him for a long moment, then rummaged inside and brought out the plastic bag bearing the logo of the gift shop at Troy and laid it on the table. “I never read
The Iliad
, but I did read
The Odyssey
for World Lit class. Have you read it?”

“No.” His voice was rough with sleep, maybe with something else too. But if she’d learned anything from raising Jack and a lifetime of working with men, it was when to push and when to back off. She had nothing to gain from giving advice, offering suggestions, interfering any more than she had. Only Keenan could decide to make that final journey, the one that would bring him home.

She patted the bag. “Give it a try. Thanks for everything, Keenan. Good-bye,” she said, and let herself out, trotting through Beyoğlu’s silent streets, empty but for street sweepers and delivery vans. She climbed the stairs to the lobby, containing only a yawning night clerk. “Oh,” Rose said when she let herself into her room to find Grannie struggling with a bulging suitcase. “I thought you’d still be asleep.”

“I forgot to stop by a florist and pick up some of those tulip bulbs we saw yesterday. Oh well. I don’t have room for them anyway,” Grannie said distractedly, tugging on the expansion zipper. “I thought it would be easier this morning, but it’s not. Did you have a nice evening?”

“Yes,” Rose said as she crossed the room to lean on Grannie’s suitcase. Except for the end. The end hurt more than she thought it would, more than it should for a vacation fling. But she’d watched Jack struggle with his mind, his nerves, his future. Warriors had to find their own way home, she reminded herself. The best thing she could do for him was to be there, if he wanted to make that journey. “Don’t … mention this to Jack, okay?”

“Mention what?” Grannie said, but the concern in her eyes belied her lighthearted response as she closed the zipper. “What happens in Istanbul stays in Istanbul. It’s not like he’s going to move to Lancaster. Can I put some of this in your suitcase, dear? I went a little crazy in the Spice Market yesterday.”

A taxi took them and their bulging suitcases to the airport in plenty of time for their flight. Once on board, Rose purchased the inflight WiFi and spent the ten-hour flight cleaning out her inbox, reading through all the email, filing what the efficient Hua Li had handled, answering what needed to be answered. Then she settled in to read the resumes for next month’s hiring committee meeting, and tried not to think about Penelope, Odysseus’s wife, or what it would be like to wait for weeks, months, even years, for the man she’d fallen for to come home to her.