Healing Pleasure (2 page)

Trey’s smile turned apologetic. “Sorry, sugar. That’s classified.”

“Right.” Of course it would be. She was civilian. She gnawed her bottom lip. “Okay, can you tell me what he was doing when he tore his ACL?”

“Trying not to fall on a dead teammate.”

Her jaw dropped. Dear God, he was serious. She didn’t know what answer she’d expected him to give her, but it certainly hadn’t been anything like that. She stared at him, suddenly suspecting despite his calm, arrogant demeanor that Brit might not be the only one in need of grief counseling.

“Where were you when it happened?”

“Several clicks behind. Brit was in command of Team Alpha. I was leading Team Bravo. Alpha team took point. Bravo was there just in case the mission turned to a clusterfuck.”

She had watched enough television specials and movies on the Navy SEALs to understand the term. “The mission was a disaster?”

“To put it mildly. We lost two men out there and another two, including Brit, were injured.”

“And Brit saw it happen? He saw his teammates get killed?”

“Saw and heard, sugar.”

“So did you.” She didn’t need to ask. He might not have been on the frontline, but he’d said his team had been there for backup. He looked away, but not before she caught the shadow of the memory move through his eyes. “You saw it, at least after the fact, and yet you aren’t experiencing any signs of PTSD?”

“My mind, just like the rest of me, is fit as a fiddle, sugar.”

Her gaze swept over his Western-style black shirt straining over broad shoulders and a chest obviously hard toned to perfection. Yeah, his body was fit. There was no doubt about them apples. His mind, however, might be a different story.

“So you aren’t having reoccurring nightmares?” She scrutinized his handsome features, looking for signs of a lie. “You’re not waking in a cold sweat or feeling a sense of a foreshortened future?” She suspected he was, though she could already see he’d come closer to swallowing a handful of nails than he would to admit it. His gaze returned to hers, the look in his green eyes piercing, but unreadable.

“The only future I got a feeling is being shortened is the one where I expected to have my best friend at my side through my career as a SEAL. That’s why I called you, to see that doesn’t happen.”

His evasive answer confirmed her suspicions. Brit might be afraid he wouldn’t be able to cut with the SEALs once his knee healed, but Trey was afraid he wouldn’t be able to cut it without Brit.

Deciding to keep that observation to herself for now, she grinned at him. “Is Brit as easy to talk to as you are?”

Trey’s lips stretched in another devilish grin that had her hormones rocking. “Sugar, if you can get him to talk, you’ll be worth every dime you charge and then some.”

Considering she didn’t charge much by most people’s standards, she wasn’t sure how to take that statement. Thanks to a penny-pinching and overcautious grandfather, she had plenty enough money to live on without needing to work another day in her life. She’d started her practice as a way to help those in their time of grief and pain the way she’d been helped in the past, keeping her prices affordable so she could be there for as many people as possible.

“And you think talking to me will help him?”

“I don’t know if it will or not. I can’t say I honestly believe in counseling and all that mumbo jumbo.” Trey shook his head. “I was told to set up this meeting with you.”

Intrigued, Lena drew her brows together. “By whom? Your superiors or commanders or whoever they are?” Many of her clients were referred to her by doctors, hospitals, and therapists, but she’d never had anyone come to her who’d heard about her through the military.

Trey dragged his tongue between his bottom lip and teeth. “He is my superior and commander, but he hasn’t been with the Navy in several decades. Horace Hoskins, the closest thing to a father I’ve ever known, told me to do it. Let me tell you, sugar. When Horace tells any of us boys to jump, we all ask how high.”

“If that’s so, then why hasn’t he told Brit to jump? Why hasn’t he told him to see a therapist or counselor? Why the ruse if I decide to work with Brit?”

“Brit’s not going to accept traditional talk therapy. Horace taught us not to turn to violence or anything equally stupid when we’ve got a problem, but he never forced sensitivity or openness. May, Horace’s wife, tried to pull out the sensitive side in all of us, but it didn’t work too well on Brit.”

“But Horace thinks bringing me in under the guise that I’m dating you and putting me in a position to befriend Brit will make him open up to me?”

“Something like that.”

The hint of inflection in his drawl made her suspicious. There was more to it. He just wasn’t saying it. “What if I told Brit I was sent by the Navy? I can tell him his commanding officer sent me.”

Trey was already shaking his head. “He’d know better, sugar, and he can’t know Horace brought you in on this either. We’ll do it like I said.”

The authoritative tone in his voice awakened a part of her she’d thought had been put to rest right along with Mark. “We’ll pretend you and I are dating.”

Trey winked. “You got it. Come out to Rescue Ranch tomorrow and hang for a while. Hell, it’s a good drive from the city. We’ve got enough space out there. Plan to stay the weekend. Spend some time with Brit and tell me what you think.” He stood, pulled his wallet from the back pocket of his jeans, and tossed a fifty on the table.

Lena lifted a brow as she tipped her head back to look at him. “That’s quite a tip you’re leaving the waitress.”

“I’ll stop by the counter and pay the tab on the way out. That money is for you.”

“The first consultation is free, Mr. Berke.”

“Buy yourself some food and a bottle of wine tonight. Then when we tell Brit I bought you dinner, it won’t be a lie.” He leaned into his side of the booth, snagged his Stetson off the seat where he’d placed it, and returned it to his head. “And get used to calling me Trey, sugar. It’s not going to sound right having the woman I’m courting calling me mister all the time.”

Her gaze landed on his narrow hips and tight ass encased by well-worn denim as he walked away. Exactly how far did he think this pretend game would go? How convincing would the two of them have to be for Brit to believe the ruse?

The wicked urge to find out sent whips of heat slashing across her nipples, pussy, and ass even as alarm bells sounded in her head. She couldn’t shake the sensation that she was headed into dangerous territory with a man as well trained to conquer as he was to protect.

* * * *

Trey knocked back a shot of whisky, thinking the woman he’d left a few hours ago would taste just as smooth and warm. He hadn’t expected to nearly be knocked on his ass at the sight of Lena Conley. He’d walked into the diner, slid a slow gaze over the patrons, and pegged the only single woman in the place to be her.

Arresting didn’t begin to describe the sultry bombshell who had looked up at him questioningly through sky-blue eyes as he’d approached the booth where she’d been sitting. She’d eased to her feet and he hadn’t been able to stop his attention from drinking in all five-foot-five tempting inches of her. She’d been dressed conservatively in a peach blouse, brown knee-length skirt, and matching heels, but it hadn’t taken him long to get a sense of the vixen she obviously worked hard to keep under wraps.

He set the glass on the bar, poured another shot, and glanced up as footsteps neared the parlor door. He hadn’t seen anyone since he’d returned to the ranch and hadn’t bothered to look, figuring the teens and crew were still out making their rounds on the land.

Horace stopped in the doorway, the older man’s gaze landing on the shot glass before lifting to Trey’s face. “A bit early for a drink, ain’t it?”

Trey toasted the air between them with the glass before knocking back the second shot and shooting the man a grin. “It’s five o’clock somewhere. You want one?”

Horace adjusted his jeans on his hips as he walked to the opposite side of the bar. “Hell, might as well. How’d the meetin’ go?”

Trey snagged another glass from the shelf beneath the bar, poured Horace a shot, and handed it to the man. Figuring one more wouldn’t hurt, he poured himself another as he answered. “She’ll be out here this weekend.”

Horace nodded slowly, eyeing Trey over the rim of the shot glass as he sipped the whisky. “What’d you think of her?”

Trey studied the man’s dark eyes, not missing the twinkle in their depths. “You never told me how you heard about her.”

“May’s the one who told me about her. Said she came highly recommended by the doctor May goes to for her routine checkups.”

“What do you know about her?” Trey knew damn well Horace had checked her out. The man didn’t put any of his boys in the hands of anyone he wouldn’t trust with his own life.

Horace pulled off his tattered cowboy hat and set it on the bar, revealing a head of balding gray hair. Trey remembered when the man had a head full of thick, blond hair. Quickly approaching seventy, the signs of aging were evident in every inch of the man Trey had learned to love as his father. It pained him to know one day having a shot with his mentor and friend in the middle of the afternoon would no longer be an option.

“She hit thirty about a month ago,” Horace began. “Started her practice about five years back. May says the tactics she uses with her clients are unconventional, but effective. She’s made a strong name from herself. Sounds like she comes from good stock. Her father is a doctor in the ER at Memorial. Not from around here, though.” He sipped his whisky and smacked his lips. “Moved to these parts about six or eight years ago, I guess. Stanley Conley, her father, got hitched to Barbara Adams not long after. Barbara’s a grief counselor, too, but she works for the system.”

Trey hid a grin as he took a swig of his whisky. As he’d suspected, Horace was a fountain of information on a woman the man had yet to meet. At least about Lena’s roots. It was the personal things he wanted to know.

“Is she single?” He’d noted she hadn’t been wearing a wedding band. He’d also taken notice of the thinly veiled attraction in her eyes. Neither of those facts meant she didn’t have a boyfriend, though.

The corners of Horace’s lips twitched, making the wrinkles around his mouth more pronounced. “You interested, boy?”

Interested didn’t begin to scratch the surface of what he’d been feeling since the moment he’d spotted her. He couldn’t explain how a few minutes in her presence had drawn out his most basic instinct to have her, to control and dominate her. He knew women, could read the signs when one wanted him, and had seen that lust in her eyes despite her attempts to hide it. He’d kept himself in check, not wanting to come on too strong out of fear of scaring her off. The urge to devour every inch of her sultry flesh right there in the diner had left him hungering for more, but he’d known he wouldn’t come close to getting it if he didn’t play his cards right.

“I’m just wondering if we’ll have to deal with a jealous boyfriend showing up on the ranch this weekend.”

Horace’s grin stretched, but he let it go. “May suggested we can tell Brit and the others we hired her to help in the kitchen. We’ve been talkin’ about bringin’ someone in to give May a hand anyways.”

Trey shook his head. “I’ve already come up with a different plan. I’m passing her off as my new girlfriend.”

He hadn’t known exactly how they would get Lena close to Brit until he’d walked into the diner. The idea of introducing her to Brit as his girlfriend was perfect in more ways than one. It had been years since he’d dated a woman without Brit and he had no intentions of it staying that way with Lena. He figured starting off solo, drawing her into a pretend relationship, and working to turn it real would reap double the benefits. Brit would know he intended to share her, thus opening the door for her to get close enough to him to make him talk about the demons ruling his head. And, all the while, Trey could tighten the rope he’d already started to tie around her, pulling her in until he got her right where he wanted her…naked, bound, and between him and Brit.

Horace scratched his chin thoughtfully as he studied Trey. “It’s gonna piss him off, thinkin’ you’re goin’ out on your own with a woman.”

“He won’t let it stay that way for long. He’ll start making his moves and she can use that to utilize her unconventional methods to help him.”

“Does she know how things work here at the ranch? How they are in Pleasure?”

Trey lifted a shoulder. “People in the city know Pleasure is chock-full of ménage relationships, even if most of them are kept quiet outside of town. As for the ranch, I didn’t go into detail about what we do here. She knows we’re all family, but that’s about as far as the talk went.”

“Won’t take long for her to get the gist of it. If she’s as good as people say she is, May’s thinkin’ she might be a good woman to get Dillon to open up, too. Boy’s still havin’ some trouble adjustin’.”

Dillon Stokes was part of what Trey and the other nine of the original boys of Rescue Ranch thought of as the next generation. Trey wasn’t exactly sure how Horace and May had come across the fourteen-year-old boy, but he knew Dillon, like all the boys who called Rescue Ranch their home, had been living on the streets without a soul who cared for him.