SEAL'd Perfection The Complete Collection: A Navy SEAL Romance (25 page)

“Listen, Jace, before we start, I have something I want to say,” I said, placing two plates on the table. I sat down in the chair next to him, our knees touching under the table for a moment as I fidgeted. “I don’t want things to be weird between us because of what happened the other day…in the storage room. So, if you’re mad or upset about that, I’m sorry. I know I was kind of an ice queen afterwards, and Friday, and I didn’t mean to be. It’s just, the whole thing surprised me and I guess…I’m still sorting out what I want.”

Instead of looking relieved, as I’d expected, Jace’s face shifted, getting even darker.

“There’s something I need to tell you too.” He paused, looking down at the table and my heart raced faster.

“About Thursday?” I dared to ask.

“No, but it will definitely affect things between us,” he said.

I toyed with the edge of the napkin in my lap and tried to keep my mind in check as it threatened to start running away. “What is it? Just say it.”

His expression was dark, and somehow twisted, wrenching my heart as my mind broke free and started racing through a list of possibilities of whatever he was about to tell me. Was he going to tell me he couldn’t afford to hire the lawyer? That he couldn’t let me borrow the money after all? Panic came at me in waves with the rapid rise and fall of my chest. If he couldn’t afford the lawyer he would have said something before now. That couldn’t be it. Was he sick? Did it have something to do with his show? “Jace, please.”

“I was going to wait till after dinner, but you need to know…” He took a deep breath. “I got some news, this weekend.”

My heart and mind screeched to a halt, a new, even darker thought taking hold.

He reached over and stroked a strand of my hair, running it through his fingers before tucking it behind my ear.

“At training?” I asked, stalling, not wanting to hear what I feared he would say next.

“Yeah. Kat, there’s not a good way to say it, so I’ll just,” he hesitated, and then blurted out, “They’re sending my team out. Back into the field for a mission.”

I pressed my eyes closed, absorbing the blow. “What? You’re leaving? Why? How long?”

He took my hands and stared down at them for a long minute. “I can’t really give you the details of the mission. But, there’s a terrorist group that have taken a group of journalists hostage. The White House has received video threats that give a list of demands in exchange for their lives. The gist of it being that for every week that their demands go unmet, they’ll execute a hostage. My team has been assigned to go in and retrieve the hostages and take out the threat.”

My hand ripped from his and flew to my mouth to cover a sharp gasp. I shook my head violently. “No. Jace, no. You can’t…that’s…oh my God. That’s so awful!”

He pulled my chair closer to him and reached over, taking me into his arms. I lifted up, out of my chair, and sat on his lap as he held me tightly to his chest. My eyes were dry, too stunned at his news to fully process the emotions swirling through me. “How long are you going to be gone?” I asked, my words muffled by Jace’s shirt.

“I don’t know. It could be a few weeks, few months. Maybe longer.”

I couldn’t speak—my mind had turned into a jumbled mess of thoughts. What about the trial? What about his show? And the shop? What was it going to be like not seeing him every day at three for lunch? Would I be able to talk to him? What if he came back and went off the rails like before? Would he even care about me anymore? Would he be the same? Feel the same? What if he didn’t…no—I couldn’t let myself go there.

“Kat, I’ll come back, I promise,” he whispered into my ear, as though reading my thoughts.

I nodded against his chest, clinging to his words like they were a promise. “When do you leave?”

He paused and my heart braced itself for his answer. “Tomorrow. We have to fly to Virginia to meet with the CIA task force that’s been communicating with the terrorists and get our marching orders.”

I shuddered at the thought of saying goodbye and for a moment, let myself marvel at how attached to him I’d become. It wasn’t about Jax, or the trial and the money, or even the sinfully hot sex. I would just miss Jace. I’d miss
him
.

“How is this even happening?” I asked. “I thought you weren’t a SEAL anymore?”

He smiled sadly. “Once a SEAL, always a SEAL. I’m technically not out, I went into reserves. I guess I wasn’t ready to completely say goodbye. My team is the one that got called up, so that means I’m on deck.”

I nodded and bit my lip to keep the rest of my half a dozen questions from bubbling out. Jace was obviously just as destroyed by the news as I was, and I knew peppering him with questions wouldn’t be the best way to spend his last night in town.

I ran my hands up his chest, committing every muscle outline to memory, tearing up as I wondered when I would be able to be held like this again. I met his blue eyes that were dark, clouded with emotion, as he looked down at me. I slid my hand up his neck, and placed it on the side of his face, cradling his strong jaw in my palm. “Will you stay here tonight?” I whispered.

He kissed me gently, emotions pouring between us as we clung together for dear life. When his lips broke away from mine, we rested our foreheads together, drinking in the moment. Without another word, I took him by the hand, and led him to my bedroom, needing to be with him, as close as we could possibly get.

Because, in the morning, he’d be gone.

Continued in
SEAL’d Perfection Book 4!

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More from KB Winters

Plush A Billionaire Romance

What The Luck

Fate Interrupted

Timeless Passion

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SEAL’d Perfection

Temporary Assignment

First of all, I’d like to thank all my readers. Without you, my books wouldn’t need to exist. I truly appreciate each and every one of you.

Thanks to all of my beta readers, street team, ARC readers and Facebook fans. You girls are the best!

And a huge very special thanks to my PA, Shannon Hunt and Once Upon an Alpha. Without you, I’d be a hot mess! Thank you!

And a very special thanks to my editor, Tina. Thank you for making my words make sense.

KB Winters has an addiction to caffeine, tattoos and hard-bodied alpha males. The men in her books are very sexy, protective and sometimes bossy, her ladies are…well…
bossier
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Living in sunny Southern California, the embarrassingly hopeless romantic writes every chance she gets!

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SEAL’d Perfection

Book 4

By

KB Winters

Copyright © 2015 KB Winters

Published By: BookBoyfriends Publishing LLC

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination and have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2015 KB Winters

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of the trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

“And in other news, the Chicago Zoo has some new additions in their penguin exhibit! Stick around after the break to meet the new chicks!”

I huffed and flicked off the TV with a decisive smashing of the buttons on the remote control. When the screen faded to black, I tossed the remote to the couch, sighing when it bounced off and landed on the floor.
God, when did everything turn to shit around here?
I wondered to myself as I stooped to pick up the device from the floor. I sank into the couch cushions and rubbed my temples. I wasn’t really an avid news watcher, but since Jace left a month ago on a top secret mission, I found myself watching every broadcast I could, with the hope that some story would pop out and I could decode it somehow and figure out where Jace was and what he was doing with his SEAL team.

Not like I’d be able to do anything about it. Knowing where he was, and what he was doing, might make me feel a little better, but it wasn’t going to bring him home any faster.

“Ugh, get it together Kat,” I pleaded with myself, pinching my eyes closed.

After a moment, I pushed off the couch and gathered the stack of dirty dishes that had been gradually taking over the coffee table. My ordinarily neat—minus any toddler interference—townhome had turned into a bit of a pig pen over the past weeks. Without Jax and Jace around, life had become an endless shuffle, work, home, school, and home again, and somewhere in the middle of it all, I’d lost the motivation to really care if the dishes were done every night, or the junk mail got shredded, or the carpet got vacuumed.

I set the stack in the sink and pulled up on the handle to pour some hot water down, letting it run for a few minutes, before I realized I hadn’t put the stopper in and the water was all rushing down the drain. I bashed the handle down, ceasing the flow, and stalked out of the kitchen, too irritated and edgy to clean. It was my night without school and I had no idea what to do with myself for the rest of the evening. I had two days until my scheduled visitation with Jax—a once a week ritual, thanks to the biased mediator that had presided over the meeting I had with Mitch—and decided to clean the following night. Before I fully realized what I was doing, I’d flicked the TV back on and was scanning the channels to see if there were any news shows I’d previously missed, or to see if there were any late additions to the lineup, perhaps a breaking story from the Middle East, something to do with hostages and an esteemed SEAL team.…

I knew I was being insane, but that realization didn’t really make much of a difference, as I spent the rest of the night curled up on the couch, bouncing back and forth between five different channels, praying for a sign of Jace and his team.

As per the new normal, I went to bed alone, in an empty house, cut off and isolated from anyone and everything, tossing and turning until my mind finally released me from the constant churning’s that filled my days, and let me shift to the memory of what it had felt like to fall asleep locked in Jace’s arms.

* * * *

Ever since the mediation session, Friday afternoon’s had become the anchor of my week, the thing which all other activity revolved around. Watching Jax totter up the stairs to the front door, a huge smile on his face, as he screamed “Mama!” at the top of his miniature lungs, warmed my heart and when he fell into my arms and let me gather him close, for a split second, everything else melted away and the world felt right again.

But the illusion was shattered another second later, when I opened my eyes to find Mitch, my ex-husband, hulking over the top of us, his eyes trained on me like I was some kind of threat.

“Here’s his bag,” he grumbled that Friday, shoving Jax’s blue and orange backpack into my hands as I stood from embracing our little son. “I put Mickey in the backyard.”

It was all I could do to hold back a snarl. Nothing he said merited hostility, and yet the very sight of him turned my stomach with a sharp stab of hatred.

When Mitch understood that I had nothing to say in reply, he gave a slight nod. “I’ll be back to pick him up in the morning. Have him ready by nine.”

The hate melted into the bottomless pit in my stomach, and I bit down on the insides of my cheeks to keep from tearing up in front of him. I’d cried like a baby when the mediator told me that I would be getting once weekly, overnight visitation with Jax until we could take the case before a judge and hash out a new arrangement. With Jace’s help, I’d hired one of the fiercest lawyers from Chicago, who was prepared to fight my case, but unfortunately, couldn’t do anything until the court date, which was still six weeks away. In the meantime, I was resigned to a sliver of time with my baby, from Friday afternoon to Saturday morning.

“Jax, baby, come say goodbye,” I called behind me to my little man, who had already opened the sliding glass door to let in his beloved playmate, Mickey the over exuberant Golden Retriever.

“Bye-bye!” He yelled over his shoulder, laughing when Mickey barked in agreement.

“See you in the morning, buddy,” Mitch called past my shoulder. He gave me one last look and then turned to go back down the stairs to his fancy sports car that he’d left idling along the curb across the street. I peered through narrowed eyes to spot Hannah—his knocked up mistress-turned-wife, sitting in the passenger seat. I watched him get into the car and then shut the door before he had a chance to pull around and see me standing on the porch.