He couldn’t let her drive out of his life.
“One date,” he blurted.
“What?” She looked at him as though he’d lost his mind. Well, hell. Maybe he had.
“One date.” He said it again, liking the sound of it.
She shook her head slowly and chewed at her bottom lip for a long minute. “For old-time’s sake? No, thanks.”
A rush of adrenaline pumped through him. Think fast, Mike. And talk even faster. “This isn’t about the past, it’s about now.”
She sighed, shoved the key into the ignition but didn’t turn it. Then she grabbed the steering wheel in both hands and held on as if it were a life preserver tossed into a churning sea. “We don’t have a ‘now.”’
“Yet.”
Her hands fell from the wheel and she glanced up at him, stunned. “You’re amazing.”
He risked a grin and hoped she’d react like she always used to. “Thanks.”
Her lips twitched into a reluctant smile, and Mike felt like the same buzz of satisfaction he’d had the day he’d won his team’s underwater swim challenge.
“So how about it?” he asked.
“It’s not a good idea.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I don’t know, Mike…”
“Is that a yes?”
“It shouldn’t be.”
Maybe not. Maybe he was being an idiot. Maybe he was hoping for too much. Pushing too hard. But finding her as he had tonight seemed like a gift from the fates, and he wasn’t willing to turn his back on it. Instead he wanted to snatch at this unexpected second chance and run with it. “But it is a yes.” It wasn’t a question.
Her hands tightened on the wheel until even in the dim light, he could see her knuckles whitening. “Okay, yes.”
“Atta girl.” The words slid from him on a quietly exultant breath.
“I have school during the day, and I work most nights. But I’m off on Thursday.”
“That’s three days from now.”
“In a hurry?”
“Guess I am.”
“I’m not,” she said, keeping her gaze focused on his. “So—Thursday?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Pick me up at my house around seven.”
“Where do you live?” he asked as she closed the door and fired up the engine.
She rolled the window down and looked up at him. “My folks’ place. You remember how to find it?”
He could have found the old house in the dark, blindfolded. He’d spent so much time with her there, on the porch swing, in the backyard, in her room when her parents were gone. His body jumped to life and it took all his willpower to step back from the car as she gunned the engine, and the old four-door coughed and sputtered reluctantly.
Then she put the car in gear and drove out of the parking lot without looking at him again. Mike watched until her taillights disappeared, then he shifted his gaze to the man still sitting in the shadows of the verandah like a sentinel.
A spot between his shoulder blades itched—like it did every time he was in the field. It was a feeling that had saved his life more than once. He could tell when he was being watched, and Mike didn’t care for it in civilian life any more than he liked it when on a mission. “She says you’re a friend,” he said, his voice loud and clear, carrying easily in the otherwise still night air.
“I am.”
He tipped his head to one side and stared at the man who looked as relaxed as a coiled spring. “How close a friend?”
A match flared in the darkness as Clay Crawford lit a cigar. In seconds, the rich scent of tobacco smoke drifted across the parking lot toward him.
Clay held the cigar out and studied the glowing tip of it. Then, casually he stood and walked toward the back door of his place. Before he stepped inside, though, he turned and said, “Looks to me as though I’m a better friend to her than you are.”
Then he was gone, and Mike was alone again, forced to admit that the son of a bitch was right.
Chapter 4
Just after the crack of dawn, Mike headed down the stairs from the apartment over his sister’s garage. As a SEAL, Mike was accustomed to waking up in the predawn hours. As a mother of two boys under the age of two, so was Colleen. So he knew he’d find her up and moving around already.
The small neighborhood outside Savannah was quiet, and Mike’s stealthy footsteps on the creaky wooden stairs did nothing to disturb it. Birds sang in the trees, and from somewhere far down the block, a door slammed, the sound echoing in the silence like a gunshot.
God knew he was way more familiar with gunshots than suburban living, but at the moment, he wasn’t thinking about any of that. All he wanted right now was a few minutes of his sister-the-buttinski’s time.
Whenever he was in town, he stayed at the garage apartment, since Colleen insisted it was stupid for him to stay in a hotel when there was family nearby—and it didn’t make sense for him to own his own place. Hell, he’d be lucky to see it for more than a few months every year.
Ordinarily, he was glad for the setup. Gave him a chance to see his only family and a rent-free place to drop in and out of. But just now, he was thinking that he’d have been better off camping out down by the river. At least then he wouldn’t have been maneuvered into a surprise reunion with Kelly. Not that he minded seeing her again. Hell, that was the one up side to this mess. But a little warning might not have been out of line.
At the bottom of the stairs, he stepped into a slice of light thrown through the kitchen windows to banish the early-morning shadows. He didn’t even bother glancing in the windows, he just headed for the back door and walked inside. Colleen always unlocked the door as soon as she was up and moving, so Mike could come and go as he pleased. Today, she just might regret that move.
“Unca Mike!” T.J., short for Tom, Jr., grinned and waved an empty spoon at him. Perched on his booster seat at the table, the little boy grinned at his favorite uncle.
“Hey, shrimp.” Mike reached out to ruffle the boy’s soft, dark brown hair, feeling his heart do a slow bump and roll, as always. “Making trouble?”
“Not yet, but it’s early,” Colleen said, smiling up at her brother as she set a bowl of oatmeal in front of T.J. “Want some coffee?”
He shot her a narrow-eyed look. “Does it come with answers?”
She hid a smile…badly. “Thought you liked yours black.”
“Colleen…”
“Hand this to Danny, would you?” she cut him off by giving him a tiny plastic plate holding a piece of toast, minus the crust, sliced up into several smaller wedges.
Half turning, he set the plate decorated with cartoon characters on the high chair tray and grinned when the baby grabbed for the food. “Geez, this kid can eat.”
“Takes after his uncle.”
“Uh-huh,” he said, turning back to his sister, who was purposely keeping her back to him. “Don’t think compliments are going to get you out of this.”
“Who, me?” She reached down two mugs from a cabinet, then grabbed the coffee carafe and filled them both. Handing one to her brother, Colleen took a sip herself and watched him over the rim of the cup. “So you saw her.”
“Yeah. Right before she dumped a tray of drinks in my lap.”
She winced. “Yikes.”
“You should have told me.”
“How did I know she’d throw a tray of drinks at you?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Fine. If I’d said something, you wouldn’t have gone to the club.”
“My decision.”
“And your decisions have always been so good when it comes to Kelly.”
“Damn it, Colleen…”
“Damn it,” T.J. echoed, grinning while oatmeal dribbled out of his open mouth.
“Nice going,” Colleen muttered, then looked at her son. “We don’t say that word, T.J.”
“Mike does.”
“Uncle Mike shouldn’t,” his mot
her said, shooting her brother another look.
The boy shrugged and returned to shoving his spoon through the thick cereal as if it were a ship plowing through an ice floe. His baby brother was happily tossing toast around the kitchen floor to be gobbled up by the family Schnauzer, hiding under the table.
“So…?” Mike prompted a minute later.
Colleen sighed and pushed her long, dark brown hair back from her face. “Okay, so I didn’t want to tell you Kelly works at Steam. I wanted you two to see each other. To talk.”
“We talked,” he admitted, leaning one hip against the countertop. He’d been going over their happy little reunion in his mind all night. He’d tried to figure out what he could have done differently. How he might have handled the surprise of facing those green eyes again in a better way. Nothing had come to him. Nothing except the fierce need to see her again. “It wasn’t pretty.”
Colleen sighed, then reached out and punched his upper arm.
“Hey!” He frowned at her. T.J. laughed, and the baby threw more toast.
“Well, honestly, Mike. You’re hopeless.”
“And you’re nosy,” he countered, setting his now empty coffee cup on the fake butcher block.
“I tell her that all the time,” Tom said as he stepped into the kitchen in a navy blue three-piece suit.
“Some help you are,” Colleen muttered as her husband bent to kiss her cheek just before snatching her coffee and helping himself.
“Hey, blame it on the Y chromosome,” Tom said, smiling. “I’m on Mike’s side in this.”
Mike grinned at his brother-in-law. “And it’s appreciated.”
“I’m on his side, too,” Colleen said, glaring at both of them.
“Daddy!” T.J. crowed and kicked out of his booster chair to slide to the floor. Running toward his father with outstretched, gooey hands, the boy was intercepted just in time by his mother.
“There are just too damn many Y’s around here,” Colleen muttered as she marched T.J. off to clean him up.
“Damn!” T.J. howled.
Mike and Tom clinked their mugs together in a halfhearted toast as silence reigned in the kitchen again.
Kelly spent the next few days trying to concentrate on her classes. Not an easy thing to do when your brain wasn’t cooperating. It wasn’t just simple exhaustion. She was used to being tired. Working until two in the morning and then arriving at school by seven-thirty didn’t make for much sleep. But these days things were different.
The sleep she’d managed to get at night was now absolutely ruined by recurring dreams of Mike. And not the ordinary, run-of-the-mill, based-on-the-past dreams, either.
These were Technicolor, the-hills-are-alive, feel-the-hormones-spring-into-life dreams. It didn’t help that Mike was showing up every night at Steam. He’d sit in the bar, nurse a single beer all night long and keep her involved in snatches of conversation.
He made her laugh, made her furious. He invaded the comfort of her world, getting to know her co-workers, making friends of the bouncers and the bartenders. Oh, he and Clay still bristled at each other, but everyone else at Steam was now convinced that Mike was a hell of a guy.
Now she walked across the campus, and as beads of sweat rolled down her spine beneath her peach-colored tank top, she shivered. Her dreams had left her not only exhausted but hungry. Hungry for what she’d once known. Hungry for what she’d been looking for ever since Mike left town.
“Pitiful,” she murmured, then said, “Sorry,” as she absently bumped into another student, hustling along the same path winding through the trees.
She’d tried to get over Mike, but his memory continued to linger. There hadn’t been many men in her life since Mike…but every single one of them had been compared to him and inevitably came up short. No one’s smile was as wicked. No other man’s touch was as electric. No other man had the ability to turn her on with a look and melt every defense she’d ever possessed.
Kelly sighed, stepped off the path and dropped to a grassy patch beneath the closest tree. The temperature in the shade was a good five or ten degrees cooler than under the direct sun. She leaned her head back against the rough bark and stared up at the sky through the leafy umbrella overhead. Leaves danced lazily in the slow breeze and cast a nearly hypnotic spell over her.
Mike.
It always came down to Mike.
How could she move into her future if her present kept getting cluttered with her past? “I can’t,” she said, shifting her gaze to the dozen or so students she could see wandering around the campus. Everyone here seemed to have their lives on a direct path. They knew where they were going and knew just how to get there. In comparison, Kelly felt as though she’d been wandering lost in the woods for years.
She reached for the bottle of water stuffed into her dark blue nylon backpack. Taking a long drink of the lukewarm liquid, she sighed and told herself that she had to find a way to get past the hopes and dreams her subconscious had obviously been clinging to all this time. She had to find a way to put Mike where he belonged.
In her past.
And as she sat beneath the gnarled oak tree, a plan began to take shape.
“I’m not speaking to you.” Kelly glared at the phone receiver in her hand, then slapped it up against her ear again.
“You and Mike both,” Colleen said, then shouted, “T.J., don’t push the truck across your brother’s head.”
Kelly smiled, then told herself to not be charmed. Her best friend had set her up and she was mad, darn it. She’d even avoided talking to Colleen for the past few days. But she couldn’t avoid her forever. Leaning in toward the bathroom mirror, she waved the mascara wand over her eyelashes again and said, “You shouldn’t have set us up like that, Colleen.”
“Yeah, yeah,” her friend said. “I already had the lecture, thanks. Both from Mike and Tom.”
“Did you listen?”
“No.”
“Didn’t think so.” Kelly shifted the phone to her other hand and did the same with the mascara wand.
“When I’m concerned about the people I love, I have to act. I can’t just sit by and—”
“—let us run our own lives?” Kelly finished for her.
“That seems a little harsh.”
“But true?”
“Fine. I’m a terrible human being. I should be shot at dawn. No wait,” she said quickly. “Not dawn. If I’m going to be shot, I want to at least be able to sleep in once before I die.”
Kelly chuckled and put the mascara away. As she gave herself the once-over in the mirror, she asked, “Kids still getting you up way too early?”
“Concern!” Colleen said quickly. “Does that mean I’m forgiven?”
“Almost.” How could she be angry at Colleen for trying to help, when for the past six years, her best friend had had a ringside seat to see how much Kelly had missed Mike?
“Good. So what are you wearing for your date?”
“It’s not a date.”
“Mike’s picking you up, taking you somewhere and bringing you home again. Unless there’s a Taxi sign on the roof of my car—which he’s borrowed—that’s a date.”
A date.
With the man who’d walked out on her six years ago. She was an idiot. A moron. A fool, setting herself up to be flattened again.
And butterflies were swarming in her stomach.
She slapped one hand against her abdomen in a feeble attempt to regain control. “Fine. A date. But its not the start of something new, Colleen, so don’t get your hopes up.”
“Huh?”
Kelly stood back from the mirror and gave herself another good look. Dark green dress with a deep vee neckline and a hip-hugging skirt with a hem that stopped just before illegal. Oh, yeah. She was ready. If she knew Mike, her plan would be put into action with no problem at all.
“I finally figured it out today,” Kelly said, then stopped herself. “This is between you and me, Colleen. No leaks to the other side.”
/> Her friend laughed shortly. “Believe me, after this morning, this double X has no interest in being kind to the Y’s of the world.”
“What?”
“Never mind. What’re you up to?”
“Just this,” Kelly said, hitting the light switch, then walking from the bathroom. “It occurred to me this morning that the reason I never got over your brother was simple.”
“You still love him?”
Kelly winced and picked up her purse from the end of the couch. She didn’t even want to go there. “I didn’t say that. I had no closure, that’s all. He walked out, joined the Navy and pretty much disappeared from my life. That’s why I can’t move on. I need closure.”
“Uh-oh,” Colleen said, and in the background Kelly heard one of the boys crying. “Look, I gotta run, so make it fast. What’s going on?”
“Very simple,” Kelly said, stepping into her best pair of oh-baby black, high-heeled sandals, “I have to have sex with Mike again.”
“What?”
“You heard me. The only way to get him out of my system once and for all is to sleep with him again.”
“Kel…”
“Trust me,” Kelly said, and smiled to herself as Mike’s headlights flashed through the living room sheers. “This is gonna work.”
Chapter 5
Angelini’s, an Italian restaurant on the outskirts of Savannah, was quiet, elegant and romantic. Which would have made it perfect if Mike hadn’t felt as nervous as a teenager on his first date.
Stupid, maybe, but it couldn’t be helped. He’d faced down mortar fire without flinching, defused bombs seconds from exploding without batting an eye and yet…sitting across a candlelit table from Kelly weakened him in ways he didn’t even want to consider. She was more beautiful every time he saw her. The dark green dress she wore did great things for her grass-colored eyes. And the dress’s neckline did amazing things for her breasts—which in turn did some damn fine things for his hormone levels. Her skin looked creamy and smooth in the dim light, and the candle’s flame seemed to sparkle in the depths of her dark red hair. Six years ago Kelly had been a beauty, today she was so much more. She’d become a woman while he was off running around the world. A hell of a woman.
The Dare Affair: Summer In Savannah Anth. (Dynasties: The Danforths Book 6.5 Page 10