[When SEALs Come Home 04] - Heated (11 page)

“You’re beautiful. Our chemistry’s off-the-radar good. Why wouldn’t I want to sleep with you?”

She licked a smear of chocolate off her fingers, and his whole body tightened. “You want me to be your booty call.”

“Hell. No.” But he didn’t
know
what he wanted. He had a feeling that made two of them.

“Are you sure? Because I would be okay with that as long we kept it to ourselves.”

***

“T
hat doesn’t sound like a bad thing,” he said cautiously, like he sensed a trap.

“I can’t—I won’t—jeopardize my career for sex. Not even really, really good sex.”

“Got it. You’ve got a career plan.” He winked at her. “At least one checklist and a set of five-year goals. All I’m suggesting is that you add an orgasm or six to your list. Pencil me in for your free time and lay with me. That’s all I’m asking.”

Don’t smile.
Joey was cute as hell when he was teasing her, but smiling would only encourage him.

“Do I look like the kind of person who
plays
?”

“You look hot. Sexy. I think you can do whatever you want.”

It was official. Joey ticked all the boxes on her
Cosmo
checklist.

“Okay,” she sighed.

“Okay you agree, or okay ‘take me now, big guy’?” He slouched back in the truck bed, one big hand rubbing a lazy circle on her thigh. Huh. She hadn’t known that was an erogenous zone. Four inches higher, sure, but her thigh? She’d been patted there dozens of time without this...
incendiary
... effect Joey had on her.

“Okay, let’s see where this”—she waved a hand— “
chemistry
takes us.”

Someone yelled from the jobsite for Joey to get his butt in gear, and he hollered back an
I’m coming
. Then he leaned in.  “If I kiss you now, does that count as outing us?”

“Yes. No kissing in public.”

“Okay,” he said, giving her back her own word. “I need to finish up here anyhow.”

She eyed the half-finished chaos of the building site. Completing a house in an afternoon seemed ambitious, even for Joey. She felt exhausted even contemplating the obvious undone things, like adding siding to the wood framing and windows and doors. Not to mention finishing the roof before the rain on the horizon decided to dump all over the place.

“I’m not sure that’s possible,” she said frankly, and he laughed, levering himself upright.

“Come and help and we’ll get closer to the finish line.”

He tugged her off the truck bed, tossed their paper plates in the burn pile, and led her over to framing. She had no idea what it was supposed to be, other than a box without walls. Joey apparently saw something she didn’t. Typical.

“Ever use a nail gun?”

“No.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “But if you make a sex joke now, Joey Carter, I swear I’ll figure it out on my own and nail your hide to the wall.”

He laughed and handed her the gun—and, man, she was in trouble because she wanted to hand him her heart and say “Merry Christmas, I picked this out for you.”

And all he wanted was sex and a good time.
Remember that.

***

“B
reak it down for me. In steps.” A cute little furrow creased the space between Mercy’s eyebrows as she focused on the loaded nail gun like he’d just told her to run a nuclear reactor singlehandedly and the fate of the world now rested in her hands. She took everything so seriously—and
that
was seriously endearing.

“You’re going to wrinkle.” He ran a finger down the small crease and slipped a pair of safety glasses onto her nose.

“I’ll live.” She gave him back the nail gun and pulled her hair up into a ponytail. Then she turned and faced him, all serious face. In pure self-defense, he cupped her shoulders and pointed her toward the skeleton wall.

“Just like shooting bullets,” he said, moving behind her. Hitting wood was different than hitting flesh, but he wasn’t thinking about that today. She nodded and eyed the wood.

“Do I have a target? And can I shoot off my foot with this thing?”

“Press the nose against the wood and pull the trigger. No pull, no nail.
Nada.
Your foot is safe.”

He wrapped a hand around hers, pulling her snug against his front. That was a nice position, although not strictly necessary. If she could handle a firearm, she could handle the nail gun. But he’d take any excuse to hold her. She didn’t protest. Reaching around her, he slapped a two-by-four in place. 

“Ready?”

She adjusted her grip and nodded. “Yeah.”

“Then put the nose against the blue X some helpful soul drew on our board, pull the trigger, and wait for the kick.”

“Got it.” She squeezed the trigger, nice and deliberate, and the nail shot out of the gun and embedded itself into the wood.

“I’ll hold. You nail,” he said, keeping his hand over hers. Not because she didn’t have this—she totally did—but because he liked holding her. They worked in companionable silence for a while. He held the board; she nailed it into place. She might not think they were on a date, but he liked the way their afternoon was going. She’d gotten him half-naked, they’d had some food, and now he was about six inches from her right thigh. He felt like fist pumping—and asking when he could see her again.

“How did you know Will Donegan? Did you serve together in the military? I know the Donovans put together their team from former military.” She concentrated on the wood, aimed, and shot. Another nail thunked into the wood.

“He was a hotshot. We fought fires together. We were on the same team.”

She took aim a second time and fired a new nail into the wood. “Team’s important to you.”

“Team is family.” He took a good look around at the Donovans, at Kade and Tye and all the other guys. He had their backs. It was that simple.

“And Abbie was Will’s family.”

“Yeah, so that makes her ours.”

She smiled at him, and her smile was fucking beautiful, full of heat and laughter and approval. Usually, he only earned that kind of smile in bed. Funny how Mercy changed things.

“I think that’s sweet,” she announced, and he shouldn’t have felt like he’d just won the biggest, shiniest trophy in the trophy case.

“There’s nothing sweet about it. I owe him.”

“It’s not your fault he died.”

“You’ve said that.”

“And you still don’t believe me.”

He shrugged. She couldn’t change the truth.

She brushed her thumb over his wrist. “You’ve got a tattoo. Is it a quote?”

A name. The name of the kid his tank had run over, inked into his skin in curling Arabic script. He couldn’t read a word of it, but he didn’t have to. He’d put it where he’d see it all day long.

“Did you get this when you were overseas?” she asked when he didn’t answer.

The kid’s funeral had been one more funeral he hadn’t gone to. He’d already been out on another mission, and he wouldn’t have been welcome anyhow. He’d heard through the grapevine that Uncle Sam had made a financial payment to the boy’s mother. Blood money. He didn’t think dollars could replace what she’d lost, but maybe the gesture made her feel better. He didn’t understand why it had happened, and he damned sure didn’t know how to fix it. Maybe the money could help where he couldn’t. Or not.

“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “But trust me, you don’t want to hear about it.”

He was a chicken because he didn’t want to tell her and watch the admiration fade from her eyes. He wasn’t making excuses for the war, not for what happened there or for why his country had chosen to get involved in the first place. Circumstances there hadn’t been perfect, but he’d made do with what he’d been handed and fought the best he could. Every fight had its reasons, but he’d wondered more than once what he was fighting for. Coming home had made those reasons perfectly clear. He’d been fighting for Strong. For Mercedes. For these special places and people—for
home
—to continue on as they were, happily unaware of firestorms and kids in the road who could have been decoys trying to slow a convoy down so insurgents could blow an IED or open fire.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Our next date,” he lied. “How does tomorrow sound?”

“Our first date,” she corrected. “Today doesn’t count. I told you that.”

“But we both know I’m not good at listening.” He pulled her a little closer. “So why don’t you tell me when to pick you up?”

She hesitated. “Tomorrow’s busy.”

That wasn’t a
no
. He wanted to fist pump. To drop a kiss on her smiling mouth and swing her around in a circle. She was going to say
yes
. He could feel it.

“Do you already have a hot date tomorrow? Should I be jealous?”

“I have knitting club.” She bit her lip. “God. That sounds so unexciting.”

“I’ll pick you up after your club meeting and take you out to dinner.”

Another pause. Shit. Right. She didn’t want to be seen with him. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but it was a problem for another day. “Or we could go to my place,” he suggested. “I’ll cook for you.”

“You cook?”

“I barbecue. And I know how to order takeout.”
Say yes
.

“Okay,” she said.

He brushed his mouth against her ear. “Say the words,” he whispered.

“Yes, it’s date.” Her mouth curved up.

J
oey got to the art gallery twenty minutes before the knitting extravaganza was scheduled to end. Knitting wasn’t how he’d choose to spend his Sunday afternoon, but he wasn’t a girl. Maybe the gossip and the snacks made up for it. Maybe he needed a Y chromosome to find his happy place knitting. Or maybe Mercy hated it every bit as much as he suspected he would, and he was merely her get-out-of-jail-free card.

It didn’t matter much to him.

What mattered was that she’d finally agreed to go out with him on a date. He’d dated lots of women over the years, which made him sound like more of a player than he was, but surely it also meant he shouldn’t be feeling nervous? He knew the unspoken rules, how to make a night special, and when to admit that the chemistry just wasn’t there and wind things down. He and Mercy had plenty of chemistry. He had plenty of practice, which had to translate into success tonight. He hoped.

He eyeballed the big glass doors impatiently, waiting for them to swing open. He could just make out a cluster of women sprawled over the art gallery’s swank leather seats.  They all looked busy, and the place looked like a yarn factory had exploded.  A casual question to Rio had revealed that the ladies met there every other Sunday for knitting and brownies. Rio claimed it was a charity thing, with the output going to a women’s shelter up Sacramento way. It was certainly a beehive of activity in there.

Mercy was the first one out the door, thank God, like she was in one hell of a hurry. He didn’t know whether she just wanted to see him that badly or, more likely, she wanted to get out of there before the other women caught on to who was picking her up. He felt like he was back in high school, sneaking around. Hell, he’d been half-worried she’d stand him up or tell him she’d changed her mind.

“Hi,” she said shyly.

“Hi yourself.” He pushed off the truck and popped the passenger-side door open for her.

“You found me.” She clutched an enormous tote bag on her lap like it was a lifeline.

He shut her door, went around, and got in the driver’s seat. His place wasn’t too far out of town. “I’m not blowing my chance at you. You’re a hard woman to date.”

She made a face. “Maybe this is a pity date, just to keep you out of trouble.”

Keeping him out of trouble was mission impossible. She’d figure that out soon enough. He flicked the magazines sticking out of her ginormous bag. “Were you worried I’d bore you?”

She shrugged. “I like magazines. They’ve got a lot of information I can use.”

“Which part is your favorite?”

He knew he’d surprised her when she blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Do you read the whole thing, cover to cover, or do you have a favorite part?” Reaching into her bag, he snagged a magazine. It was one of those glossy ones, the kind parked by the cash register at the grocery store. He gave the cover a quick once-over. Sexy hair, the perfect little black dress, how to tell if he’s cheating. The first two he could see himself reading; number three was off-limits. He had no respect for guys who cheated.

“101 sex tips for office quickies. Fantasy vacations. Is the whole thing about sex? If so, I definitely approve.”

She snatched the magazine out of his hand and tucked it back into her bag.

“You’re driving.”

Well, yeah. Fortunately for her, he was an excellent multitasker. Plus despite the disapproval coloring her voice, that pretty pink flush was back, painting her cheeks in a way that had him wondering what else would make her blush and how hard. He put that on his to-do list for the night as well.

“Keep your eyes on the road.”

He winked at her just to rile her up more. “If it makes you feel better, you can give me a ticket when we get to my place.”

In fact, he’d let her do whatever she wanted. He’d bet she had a pair of handcuffs, and while he’d always been the one to do the tying up, for her he could make an exception.

“Just slow down some, okay?”

He eased up on the gas a little, the truck settling into a steady fifty miles per hour.

“Better?” Or had her question been more metaphorical, a comment on what was happening between them? Because he could slow down there too, although it might kill him.

“You need to try smelling the roses,” she said, not answering his question, spoken or unspoken.

“Give me a good reason.” He turned onto the road leading his house. Five minutes max until he had her all alone. How long could he stretch their date out? Did she turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight, and did he have to give her back at all? Because it was just six o’clock now, and he could easily fill all of the hours between now and sunrise.

And probably between now and forever.

Huh.

He blinked hard at the windshield. This was a date, not an elopement. They were going back to his place. He’d feed her, pop in a movie, get to know her better. If he was really lucky, she’d let him kiss her and, just possibly, take her to bed. If she wasn’t ready to take that step in their relationship, that was okay too. He had plenty of time.