Finding Kenna (SEAL Team Hawaii Book 3)

by Susan Stoker

  But every time he was brought up, Kenna refused to dwell. She’d have plenty of time tonight to think back over everything they’d talked about and to pick it apart.

  Ashlyn was just as nice as the other two women, and when Lexie started to tease her about Slate, Kenna was surprised. The man struck her as impatient and not all that interested in a relationship. Then again, she didn’t know him very well. Ashlyn, however, was outgoing and bubbly, and Kenna had a hard time picturing her with Slate.

  Of course, talk had then turned to Carly, her ex, and Jag. Carly had opened up and talked about Shawn and how good things had seemed at first, until his personality had completely changed. Lexie and Elodie told Ashlyn all about what happened at Duke’s, and how Kenna had shoved him, trying to get him to let go of Carly, before Midas and Marshall had tackled him.

  By the time Kenna and Carly left, all five women were fast friends. They’d gotten Carly’s phone number, and Ashlyn had shared hers. Kenna felt good about having a new group of friends. While she enjoyed the women she met at work, it was nice not to talk shop all the time.

  After promising to get in touch soon so they could figure out another time to hang out, Kenna walked with Carly toward her car.

  Neither spoke until they were on their way back toward Waikiki.

  “You want to talk about it?” Carly asked.

  Kenna didn’t need to ask her what she meant. She knew. Sighing, Kenna shook her head. “I had no idea. I feel like an idiot.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carly said.

  “The thing is, I told him more than once that I hated being lied to. And here he was, keeping such a big secret from me.”

  “Did he lie to you though?” Carly asked.

  “Of course he did. I didn’t know he was a millionaire!” Kenna exclaimed.

  “But did he come right out and say that he wasn’t?” Carly pushed.

  “Why are you on his side?” Kenna asked. “You’re supposed to be my friend. Be supporting me.”

  “I am,” she said calmly. “But trust me, I know how a liar operates. Shawn was really good at it. And it seems to me that not telling you he has a truckload of money is way different than flat-out lying about it.”

  “I feel like an idiot. I was so excited about sneaking into Coral Springs—and he lives there! He was probably laughing his ass off at me.”

  “I doubt that. If I had to guess, I bet he was panicking.”

  “About what?” Kenna scoffed skeptically.

  “Did you tell him what beach you wanted to try to sneak onto before he picked you up?”

  “No. I wanted it to be a surprise.”

  “Right. So when you directed him to pull into his own parking lot, I bet he was shocked.”

  Kenna sighed. She could see that. But she wasn’t ready to let him off the hook yet. “He had plenty of time after that to tell me,” she insisted. “We spent all day there. He could’ve told me at some point.”

  “Look, I’m not saying you don’t have a right to feel embarrassed or even let down, but, Kenna, you’re kind of a bons.”

  Kenna frowned and looked over at Carly. Thank goodness the traffic was light. She could handle both driving and this intense conversation as a result. “A what? What the hell is a bons?”

  “A snob spelled backward. You’re a reverse snob. Instead of looking down on people who don’t have money, you judge them harshly for being wealthy.”

  Kenna snorted. Her friend’s observation was kind of ironic, since she’d called Marshall a snob that first night on her break at Duke’s. “No, I don’t,” she said.

  “You do,” Carly said gently. “I’ve noticed it before. Anytime someone comes in who looks like they have a lot of money, you kind of look down your nose at them. You’re much more comfortable with people who you think are middle to lower class than you are with the rich tourists or locals who come into the restaurant all the time.”

  Kenna wanted to protest. To say that wasn’t true. But she knew it kind of was. “I just…people look down at me because I’m not interested in being in the corporate world and making six figures a year. I’m happy being a waitress.”

  “Fuck them then,” Carly said.

  Kenna couldn’t help but laugh. Her friend didn’t swear that often, so it was somewhat surprising to hear her do so now.

  “I mean it. You’re an adult and can do what you want. And if you’re happy, who cares what others think. But seriously, girl, you’ve got a boyfriend who’s loaded. Why are you mad about that? Most women would be jumping for joy. If things work out between you two, you can live in a penthouse with a kick-ass ocean view and still be a waitress. You just maybe won’t have to work as much or worry about pesky things like rent and grocery money.”

  Kenna sighed. She knew Carly was right, but she couldn’t get over the fact that Marshall had spent the entire day with her, at his own damn private beach, and hadn’t said a word. “I know,” she said after a moment.

  “I’ve never seen you as bubbly and happy as you’ve been the last couple of weeks,” Carly said. “And it’s because of him. Not because of his money, but because of his texts. Because of your late-night conversations. A man like that doesn’t come along very often. Trust me, I know.”

  “Carly—” Kenna began, but her friend interrupted before she could continue.

  “I’m not bringing up Shawn to turn this conversation to me. I’m just saying…I don’t want to see you end what’s so far been an amazing relationship before it even truly begins. Not over something as silly as him having money.”

  Kenna didn’t think it was silly, but she still understood Carly’s point.

  “Talk to him,” she urged. “Hear him out. You’re a really excellent judge of character, you’ll know if he’s blowing smoke up your ass when he explains why he didn’t tell you. But you have to give him a chance. Don’t blow this.”

  Kenna couldn’t help but snort-laugh. “You sound invested in our relationship,” she quipped.

  “I kind of am. I mean, Jag is becoming a good friend. And it would be awkward for me to talk about him or even to see him if you break up with Aleck.”

  Kenna grinned. “So you’re admitting you like Jag?”

  “Of course I like him,” Carly said.

  “Like-like him,” Kenna clarified.

  “No,” Carly said stubbornly.

  But the fact that she was talking about seeing Jag in the future was a big deal. They both knew it, even if Carly wouldn’t admit to being interested.

  As the conversation waned, Kenna sobered as she thought about what she had to do later that night.

  She remembered what Marshall had said. That if she ever heard something about him she didn’t like, that he wanted her to talk to him about it. She’d promised. She hoped like hell this was what he was talking about. If he had some other deep dark secret, she wasn’t sure she could deal.

  Kenna had forgotten to drive though Kakaako on the way home to look at the murals, but figured she could do it another day. She pulled up outside Carly’s apartment to drop her off and her friend turned to her once more.

  “Thank you for inviting me today. I had a good time.”

  “Anytime.”

  “I haven’t made a ton of friends here, and hiding from Shawn in my apartment has been lonely. I’m going to try to make an effort to start living my life again, thanks to you.”

  Kenna smiled. “Just be careful, okay?”

  “I will. I have no desire to run into that asshole again. All I’m saying is that I really liked hanging out with the women today, and I hope I’ll get to see them again.”

  “I’m sure you will. They all got our numbers, and I have a feeling it won’t be long before we get roped into some scheme with them soon.”

  “I hope so,” Carly said with a smile. “See you tomorrow at work.”

  “See ya,” Kenna said. She idled at the curb until Carly was safely inside the lobby of her apartment, then pulled away and headed for her own place.

 
; She wasn’t looking forward to what she needed to do, but she had a few hours to think about what she wanted to say to Marshall. She wasn’t happy he’d lied by omission, and she didn’t want to be a bons, as Carly had called her, but the embarrassment Marshall had made her feel lingered just below the surface, and she hated that.

  If she and Marshall were going to be able to continue with their relationship, she had to find a way to get over that feeling. But she wasn’t sure how. And that worried her.

  So, she’d try to sort out her feelings that afternoon and would call Marshall later. They’d talk, and then she’d make the decision of whether or not she wanted to keep seeing him.

  Just the thought of not talking to him, not getting to hang out at the swap meet as they’d made plans to do, was painful…which said a lot about her feelings already. She didn’t want to break up with him. But she also didn’t want to feel as if she was the butt of one of his jokes.

  A pit formed in her belly when she thought about their call. This time tomorrow, she and Marshall would either be completely all right, or they’d be done.

  She wanted to throw up.

  Chapter Eleven

  Aleck frowned at the text he’d just received from Kenna.

  Kenna: We need to talk.

  The joke was that if a woman ever said that to a man, it didn’t mean anything good. But it was one hundred percent true. And Aleck had a feeling he knew what she wanted to talk about.

  He mentally kicked himself. He should’ve told her that he lived at Coral Springs on Sunday. He’d been enjoying the day too much to bring it up, to possibly ruin the mood—and her perception of him.

  He hadn’t thought much about her hanging out with Elodie and Lexie, but he probably should’ve warned the two women that he hadn’t told Kenna about his money, and maybe asked them if they could please not say anything until he had a chance to tell her himself.

  But he hadn’t. Kenna had spent the afternoon with Elodie and Lexie—and now she had a “need” to talk. It was likely they’d spilled the beans. He’d asked Kenna to promise she’d talk to him if she heard anything she didn’t like, and it looked like she was at least keeping that promise.

  He quickly sent a text back.

  Aleck: Of course. Anytime. I’m home and not busy.

  He’d prefer to get this over with. To apologize and grovel if he had to.

  Kenna: Okay.

  She didn’t say when she’d call, but Aleck didn’t press. He paced back and forth with his phone in his hand, trying to think of the best way to explain his reasoning behind not telling her he lived at Coral Springs. To tell her that he had a healthy seven figures in his bank account. It was almost amusing that Kenna was pissed that he had money. Most women would be thrilled. But not his Kenna.

  His Kenna.

  Shit. Was she still his?

  “Come on, call,” he muttered. He wanted this done. He hated that she was upset.

  Aleck stopped pacing and chuckled. Not because something was funny, but because he didn’t even know if she was upset. He was working himself into a frenzy. For all he knew, Kenna wanted to talk about something else.

  No. He knew deep down, his money was causing problems for her.

  Maybe he’d subconsciously hoped Elodie and Lexie would let something slip, so he didn’t have to figure out a way to bring it up.

  Either way, he hated the feeling of dread that had settled deep within him.

  Kenna made him wait for another half an hour before his phone finally rang.

  “Kenna,” he said as he answered the phone.

  “Hi.”

  Her voice was flat and didn’t have the welcoming tone it usually did when she called.

  “You said to talk to you if I ever heard something I didn’t like about you,” Kenna said, not beating around the bush. “You live in Coral Springs.”

  It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” Aleck said without prevarication.

  “You’re rich,” Kenna added.

  “Technically, my parents are rich. But yes, I have access to a very comfortable trust fund and have a healthy amount of money in my bank account.”

  Kenna didn’t say anything for a long moment, and Aleck was afraid to say anything else that would exacerbate the situation.

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Say something when we pulled into the Coral Springs parking lot on Sunday? You had plenty of time to let me know that you lived there and it wouldn’t be an issue getting onto the private beach.”

  The hurt in her voice killed him. Aleck hated having this conversation over the phone, but he wasn’t about to ask her to wait until the weekend. “I should’ve.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed.

  “I don’t really have a good excuse,” Aleck told her. “But my bank account isn’t something I go around talking about to people I just met. I only use the money my parents put aside for me very rarely. Yes, I live in a penthouse at Coral Springs. My parents bought the place a few years ago as a vacation home. When I got stationed here, they gave it to me. I tried to protest, but it was pointless. I’m paying them back for it…out of my Navy salary, not the trust fund.”

  Aleck took a deep breath and kept going. Kenna hadn’t hung up on him or interrupted, he wanted to think those were both good signs, but the truth was he had no idea. She could be waiting until he was all the way done explaining before telling him she never wanted to see him again. The thought made him talk faster.

  “You accused me of being a snob that first night we met, and while that stung, you weren’t exactly wrong. My parents did their best to make me work for what I wanted, but holidays were always awesome. I usually got exactly what I wanted. Birthdays too. And yes, I got a car when I turned sixteen. I’ve never really wanted for anything. So yeah, it was hard for me to understand why you were satisfied with a waitress’s salary. But the more I came to know you, the more I got it.

  “Life isn’t about money. It’s about relationships. Connections with people. And you’ve got the unique ability to connect with just about everyone you meet. It’s a beautiful thing, Kenna. And Sunday, when I picked you up, you were utterly adorable. So excited about crashing the private beach. I had no idea you’d picked my condo’s beach to sneak onto until we pulled into the lot. There was no good way to just blurt out that I lived there. I mean, I could’ve, and should’ve, but the truth is…I was nervous. You made your opinion of rich people more than clear, and the kind of people you assumed lived in my complex. The very last thing I wanted was for you to paint me with the same brush, or break things off because of where I lived.”

  He sighed. “For what it’s worth, I felt guilty all day, and since Sunday, I’ve felt even more like shit for deceiving you. I was going to tell you this weekend. And I know that’s a convenient thing for me to say now…but I hope you remember that I invited you to my place for dinner. I’d hoped even if you were pissed at me, I could woo you with a delicious meal.”

  Aleck stopped and took a deep breath. When Kenna still didn’t say anything, he tentatively said, “Kenna?”

  He heard her sigh. “You embarrassed me,” she said quietly. “I can’t help but think that you were laughing at me internally the whole time.”

  “Never,” Aleck said emphatically. Then he decided to tell her something he’d never told anyone else—not even his teammates. Something that had played a huge part in keeping the details of his finances close to the vest. “When I was twenty-five…I met this woman at a bar. She seemed different, not like the other Frog Hogs.”

  “Frog Hogs?” Kenna asked.

  “Yeah. The generic term is ‘tag chaser,’ women who go after any man in the military. But a Frog Hog is someone who only wants to date the best of the best…a Navy SEAL.”

  “Conceited,” Kenna muttered.

  But Aleck caught the humor in her tone, and he much preferred that than the humiliation he’d heard earlier. “We prefer the word ‘confident,’” Aleck said. He took another deep breath and continued his stor
y. “Anyway, she was tall, blonde, had a master’s degree, and she was pretty, so I felt proud that she’d singled me out. I knew about Frog Hogs, of course, but she seemed so different that I ignored the warning signs. We dated for a few months, and I thought things were going pretty great. My team hated her though. They didn’t come out and say it, but I could tell.

  “We were all out together one night, and she went to the restroom. She was gone a really long time, and I got worried, so I went to check on her. She was drunk, and laughing and talking to a girlfriend really loud in the bathroom. I could hear every word through the door.”

  Aleck paused. He hated remembering how he’d felt when he’d stood in the dim hallway in that bar.

  “What’d she say?” Kenna asked quietly.

  Deciding to treat the conversation like a bandage and just rip it off to get it over with, Aleck continued. “She was talking about me, and how she was sure I was on the verge of asking her to marry me. Basically said she’d encourage me to go to Vegas and get it done quickly, then it would only be a matter of time before I was killed on some mission. And as my wife, she’d get not only my life insurance from the Navy, but my trust fund too. She and her friend actually laughed over that, agreeing that I was a sure thing. That she wouldn’t have to—in her words—put up with me for long because of my dangerous job.”

  “Holy shit, what a cunt!” Kenna exclaimed.

  Aleck couldn’t help but chuckle, more because of Kenna saying “cunt” than anything else.

  “I hope you dumped her right then and there,” she continued.

  “I did,” Aleck said. “I turned around and left the bar. Didn’t even tell my friends why I was leaving. I had brought the bitch to the bar, so she had to get a ride home with her friend. She called me several times but I never spoke to her again. I texted her that we were done…and that’s it. It was juvenile, and I should’ve been the bigger person and broken up in person rather than ghosting her, but I just couldn’t.”

  “No, you should not have. She didn’t give a shit about you, so why would you give her the decency of breaking up in person? Fucking bitch.”