Soak (A Navy SEAL Mormon Taboo Romance) (2 page)

Chapter One

“Girls! Girls!” cried Mrs. Christiansen, her voice the
height of shrillness. “Is everyone decent? They’ll be here any second!”

It was perhaps the fourth time that morning that she’d made
this declaration, so Chloe—eldest “girl” in the Christiansen mix, at twenty-five—rolled
her eyes. “Mother, we’re fine!” she called, from the bedroom she shared with
her younger twin sisters, Celeste and Marie. The twins continued tittering,
braiding and re-braiding sections of their long, straw-blonde hair. Chloe
returned her own gaze to the library book in her lap.
Madame Bovary.

This was until they heard their mother’s anxious trot
ascending the steps. Chloe had been warned before about reading “morally
dubious,” literature, and her father, a church Elder, would be prone to make a
fuss if he got wind of her latest literary secret. So Chloe jammed Flaubert
into her top dresser drawer and smoothed her blonde bangs down, she tugged at
the hem of her paisley skirt. By the time her mother’s plump frame had filled
the bedroom doorway, all three of the Christiansen sisters looked starry-eyed
and affable. Just like good Mormon girls.

“I don’t mean to be so nervous,” their mother confessed.
“It’s just been so hard, not knowing.”

“There’s no reason to be antsy, Mama. He’s still your
firstborn son.”

“Yes, yes, I know.” Mrs. Christiansen frowned. “But he’s
never brought home a
friend
before.”

Celeste paused in her primping to shoot her mother an
accusing eye. “That’s not true, Mama! Remember when he got back from Mission,
in Guatemala? He brought Elder Timothy and Elder Joseph to dinner! Those guys
he bowls with”

Mrs. Christiansen frowned, a shadow falling across her
typically jolly face. “You know what I mean, girls. He’s never brought someone
home who’s
not of the church.
”

Marie, who preferred to think her family was more
secular-savvy than Chloe had ever found them to be, made a big show of snorting
and rolling her eyes. “It’s not 1900 anymore, Mama,” she sighed, securing her
long french braid with a piece of red ribbon. “We’re still allowed to be
friends
with non-Mormons, last I checked.”

Mrs. Christiansen opened her mouth to retort, but it was
then that the doorbell chimed, briefly saving everyone from another tiff.
This was what happened when you got four adult women to share a house
,
Chloe mused to herself.
Endless bickering.

Not that the living arrangements were Chloe’s choice, per
se. After graduating summa cum laude from BYU two springs past, she’d been
idling her time around Provo, having boomeranged back into the house she grew
up in. At school, she’d been a Geography major with a minor in French and
Italian; it had certainly always been the plan to leave Utah and see the world.
But as soon as she’d received her diploma, Chloe’s world had begun to feel
small again. Promise-less. Her close friends had scattered; many of them had
left to serve missions for the Church in distant countries, and others had
immediately started families. She sought out great books to replace them. And
as often as Chloe dreamt of jumping off a plane and into an adventure, the idea
of a Mormon mission had never appealed to her exactly. She loved the church she
was raised in, but had never quite taken to the idea of instructing other
people to believe what she believed—unlike her brother John. That anointed
firstborn son.

John was only a year older than Chloe, but the distance felt
astronomic. They’d been thick as thieves as children (to use her mother’s
idiom), but at some point in their teenage years, John had changed. His sweet
temper had burnt into a rage—something Chloe attributed to the few summers he’d
spent on extended camping trips with his Boy Scouts troop. Her family and her
church had always been proponents of the organization, but whenever John went
off with his little gang he’d come home mocking certain church customs, as if
he’d been teased by his peers for believing. It was also in the secular boys’
company that he got his first taste of masculinity, learning to fend for
himself in the wild. However the erosion happened, by the time they’d reached
sixteen and seventeen, Chloe and her brother had become strangers to each
other. It surprised no one in the community when John left Utah to accept a
scholarship to the U.S. Naval Academy.

That was seven or eight years ago, though it felt a
lifetime. John had graduated from school, served a Church mission in Guatemala,
and then managed to shock the entire Utah community by applying for a
leadership position with the Navy SEALS, in active combat duty. Chloe still
remembered the day he’d told the family he was leaving for Little Creek, where
he planned to complete advanced training.

“We thought you’d gotten this out of your system, son!” her
father had shouted. (And her father never shouted. He was known in the
community as the “especially level-headed” Elder Johannes.)  “Don’t you see
it’s time to put all the valor chasing aside? Settle down. Start a family.
Observe the scripture. That’s your task.”

“I’m loyal to my country,” John had replied. Their mother
had started sobbing, to the distress of all the younger Christiansen kids—from eight-year-old
Martin to the twins. For despite his on-again/off-again relationship to the
Church, John had always been her babied favorite.

No amount of tears had been able to sway him from the plan,
and within six months the beloved son and brother had left training for a
special assignment in Aleppo, near the Turkey/Syrian border. (Chloe could
imagine the place precisely, from her Geography classes.) John Christiansen was
to lead a special team on a secret mission, something to do with oil fields, ISIL,
and Syrian freedom-fighters. They were made to sever contact. No one uttered
her brother’s name outside the context of a prayer list for weeks and weeks.
That is, until a G.I. showed up on the family’s front steps with the dreaded,
yet somehow inevitable-feeling news: John Christiansen had been wounded in the
line of service. He would be returned to Provo as soon as it was possible to
move him, along with another SEAL from his corps, who had also been discharged.
The two men were the only survivors from their mission.

Thus preceded a blur of hospital visits. Mrs. Christiansen’s
famous blonde hair had turned white in the span of those weeks. John would lose
his left leg below the knee, and had suffered permanent hearing loss on the
same side. The military bestowed him with honors and medals commending his
bravery, but Chloe found each gesture immeasurably hollow. She became angry,
and withdrawn. Angry at the world, angry at her family, angry at herself. How
was it that this cruelty hadn’t been prevented? And no matter how distant she’d
felt her brother to be in the months leading up to his last departure, what
sort of God could reject his tremendous sacrifice, his commitment? A youth cut
down in his prime, and for what? In no small way, news of John’s misfortune had
stalled Chloe’s ability to plan for her own future. For if the world could be
so reckless with bravery, who was she to say that a quiet life in Provo wasn’t,
in fact, the right path?

She heard them entering through the foyer, and forced
herself back into the present. Her sisters had already ambled down the stairs,
after pinching their cheeks and wetting their lips like eighteenth-century
debutantes. (Mrs. Christiansen technically forbade make-up.) Rumor had it that
the mysterious SEAL accompanying her brother was a stone cold fox. Chloe hadn’t
met him yet, having opted out of many of the more recent hospital visits, when
both men were apparently “up and able to move around.” She wanted to see John
in the familiar setting of their family home, not in that cold, sterile
hospital room.

She took a deep breath, smoothed her hair flat once more,
and began to tramp down the stairs. She could hear John’s voice, even below the
high-pitched hum of her sisters and her mother as they fussed over his clothes.
She supposed her father was parking the car.

“Is that my Chloe?” John called. She felt her heart buoy,
like a sail. Chloe smiled, then raced the rest of the way down the stairs.

“Johnny!” she choked, collapsing into the familiar hug.
Though the military had basically tripled his muscle mass, she thought she
could still feel the gawky remnants of a former Boy Scout under all that
manliness. John grinned. He was hobbling some on the temporary prothesis, and a
big bandage encircled the left side of his head, but still, he was home. She
kissed his cheek.

“Family, now I want you to meet someone,” John said. He took
an unsure step backwards on the carpet, so his crutch clattered against the
radiator. Chloe bit her lip. Now that they were finally free of the dreadful
hospital surroundings, she’d been looking forward to a nice, long, personal
chat with her brother. She wanted to hear from him just how and why he thought
his misfortune had manifested. Her mother had clearly planned on having the son
to herself, too; they both frowned a little in the direction of the mysterious
visitor.

“Celeste, Marie, Mama, Chloe, Martin” John said, in a lofty
voice. “This is Ryder Strong,” he beckoned to the shadowy figure beyond the
stoop, who lumbered into the door frame with all the grace of a snowman. Chloe
prepared to judge the stranger.
Ryder Strong,
she thought.
What the
hell kind of a name is that?

Ryder paused on the welcome mat, to lift the reflective
aviator sunglasses off of his face. As his eyes adjusted to the room, Chloe
thought she could feel her little sisters sigh. Okay, okay, so he was slightly
dashing—in that rigid, military way. Mr. Strong had broad shoulders, and arms
so thick with muscle that it didn’t seem like he could lower his biceps
comfortably. But his body grew slender somewhere around his hips. He wore jeans
and a white t-shirt bearing an unfamiliar band name
(The Pumps?
Surely,
this was pornographic), and a small silver chain around his neck. When her gaze
drifted to his feet, Chloe saw that the SEAL was wearing dark leather
motorcycle boots.

“Hello,” Strong murmured, and it had to be admitted that his
mouth was...nice. Reddish and plump, in perfect parallel with the angular jaw.
He was handsome, if you liked that whole Disney prince thing. Which Chloe had
never honestly gone in for. The boys she’d liked at BYU had always tilted
toward the bookish. Tall, reedy types with longer hair and elaborate opinions;
the sorts who would’ve grown beards and smoked cigarettes if such things
weren’t frowned on in the community.

“Ryder, welcome!” Mrs. Christiansen trilled, lifting the
small party out of the awkward silence. “Please. Any guest of my son’s is
welcome in our home.” She began to wave her hands around, a motion familiar to
her daughters (as it was code for: “Minions, assemble!”). “Chloe, why don’t you
show Mr. Strong to our guest room?”

She felt his gaze on her body before their eyes made
contact, and at the same time she shivered, as if cold. There was something
about Ryder’s face. As he stepped further into the house and warm light fell
over his features, Chloe conceded that he was something more than handsome...he
had a curious, intelligent expression. And light grey eyes, which reminded her
of some line from an old story or movie she knew. “Eyes like the sea after a
storm,” came to mind.

“I go where you go,” Ryder said, and his voice was harsh,
like gravel. Chloe was reminded then that as more-than-intact as this stranger
seemed to be, he’d been where her brother had been. He’d seen what her brother
had seen. She cleared her throat, trying all the while not to think about his
eyes on her.

“It’s just up here,” she replied. “Follow me.”

The stairs creaked a little under their combined weight. She
could hear Ryder breathing behind her, but Chloe tried to keep her attention on
the hubbub in the foyer. Her father had finally come inside, and shut the heavy
oak door behind him. Elder Johannes was a short, compact man with bushy grey
eyebrows and a helmet of white hair. He was some twenty years older than her mother,
but spry and athletic for sixty-eight. When he spoke, the whole family went
silent.

“Welcome home, my son,” he said now, clapping John lightly
on the shoulder. It was silly, but Chloe imagined she could feel her family’s
circle of love tightening about her brother. Even little Martin had looked up
from his computer games to herald John’s arrival. She quickened her pace,
swallowing. She wanted to be with
her
people. Not with Ryder.

Chapter Two

“You’re in here,” she said shortly, gesturing in to the guest
room. Ryder hitched a big black duffel bag over his shoulder and breezed past
her, a little too close. She could smell him as he walked past (some fusty
cologne, clean-cut grass) and thought she could feel the hairs of his arm brush
against the spot of exposed flesh at her wrists. She wondered if this was on
purpose—then immediately took the musing back. Why would it have been?

“You think it’ll be okay?” she heard herself ask, a little
lamely. One foot was already creeping back toward the main staircase. More than
anything, Chloe wanted to be with her family. Eating their favorite foods,
telling all those familiar stories. She wanted to fold John back into their
midst until it felt like he’d never left her, never even grown up. Ryder was
the glitch in the plan.

“I think it looks cozier than a barracks, if that’s what
you’re asking.” Ryder grinned with half his mouth, then let his gaze circle the
room. It was admittedly a little dingy in the attic. Typically, this room
played host to a lot of old artifacts and art pieces that the temple had
refused. As children, she and John had liked to play up here with what they
referred to as the “buried treasure”—that was, until their father had given
them each a sharp talking-to for “defiling the sacred.” It had been enough to
scare all the kids out of the space for years.

“If you need more pillows...” Chloe began, a little lamely.

“Let me guess—hall closet?”

“How’d you guess?”

“All happy families are alike.”

“What did you say?”

But before Ryder could eke out a reply, there was racing on
the steps behind them. The twins bobbed into the doorway like helium balloons,
bright and urgent. They tripped over the same sentence.

“Dinner will be ready in an hour!” either Celeste or Marie
spat out—though both of them had clearly used this paltry piece of information
to get another eyeful of NavyBoy. Chloe rolled her eyes over their heads in
Ryder’s direction, but he refused to meet her gaze.

“Thank you, lovelies. Can’t wait to sing for my supper.” The
twins giggled. But then Ryder put two palms in front of his chest and made a
little bow, with his head. Marie found this funny, but Celeste did not.

“Mama wants us,” the latter twin said—her good opinion of
Ryder apparently revoked. Marie waggled her fingers seductively, but succumbed
when her sister dragged her out of the room. Chloe lingered.

“Is there something else...?” Ryder asked, arching a thick, mocking
eyebrow.

“Umm. Yeah.” But what was there, really?
What happened to
you and my brother? Where’s your own family? What are you doing here, and who
are you?
None of these questions seemed exactly appropriate.

“I mean, no. Never mind.” She frowned, but Ryder made that
twisted grin again. Chloe decided then and there that she didn’t like it.
Somehow, Ryder gave off the impression that he thought he was better than she
was; smarter, perhaps. Rolling her eyes again, Chloe turned to go.

“It’s from
Anna Karenina,
by the way,” she heard him
call to her retreating back. Chloe felt the backs of her ears go hot. She
popped her head around the corner again, just in time to catch a glimpse of
Ryder’s naked back as he peeled his shirt up over his head.

“Oh my God. I’m so sorry, I should’ve—”

“No, you’re totally cool. Was just gonna slip into something
more comfortable.”

She knew she was supposed to avert her eyes. To slip back
downstairs to her family, where they were all gathered around the war hero.
But, heart beating rapidfire, Chloe found herself fixed in the doorframe,
watching as Ryder pawed through the contents of his duffel, finally selecting a
black t-shirt with no logo. He raised his arms, and it was like a small concert—articulate
muscles shifted and stretched, elongating his already tall frame.

Fine, fine. She could admit it. He was... beautiful.

“Take a picture. It’ll last longer.”

...He was
awful.

“You just said something! I was just—”

“Whatever you say, Ballerina.”

“Look, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but I—”

“Just can’t get enough? Stick around. The pants come off,
next.”

Her whole face went hot. The anger began to surge in her
belly, like a snake uncoiling. Her blonde hair whipping, Chloe set off down the
stairs. She heard the faint strains of Ryder’s protests, but wasn’t about to
give Mr. Vanity a second chance to make her feel like an idiot.

“Oh, come on!” he cried after her. “I was
joking.
”