by Leslie North
“So, you mentioned trying to figure out where you want to settle down. Have you come to a decision?”
His breathing paused and her mouth instantly dried.
Chance slipped out from under her and sat up. Without a word, he pulled a pair of shorts on and left his bedroom.
Oh no. This was it. He loved her but couldn’t stay. It was happening all over again.
Tears filled Mandy’s eyes and she fell back against the pillow. Agony like she’d never known suffocated her.
“Mandy,” Chance called. “Come out here, please.”
No, she silently answered. Unable to move.
“Mandy,” he stated again, his voice a bit sterner. “Please.”
She kicked the sheet off her feet and blindly reached for her shirt and shorts. Tears robbed her sight to the point she wasn’t sure if she had her shirt on backwards, but she managed to put it on. Stumbling from his room, she used her hand to guide her down the hall to the living room.
“Sweetheart,” he begged softly. “You’re killing me. Wipe your eyes and look at me.”
Mandy wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Blinking, she gazed ahead and froze.
“I didn’t want to do this in bed,” Chance stated from his bended knee position on the carpet.
Bruises bloomed over his face, chest, and knuckles, but she’d never seen anything more beautiful in her life.
He held a black velvet box up, then opened it. “Amanda Loomis, from the first day I met you, you stole my heart. We’ve traveled a hard road to get here, but I cannot picture a future without you in it. You once told me that you dreamed of owning the garage and marrying me. I hope to God you still want that.” He lifted the box higher. “Will you be my wife?”
Tears fell from her eyes and she clapped a hand over her mouth.
His expression slipped. “I’m not making assumptions about the future. I swear. I’m asking you what you want, but I’m really hoping you want to be with me.” His words rushed together. “I can’t answer your question about where I want to settle down yet. We can buy out my brothers and live here, or live at your house, I don’t care. I only know I want to help you run the garage and live in Springwell, and maybe open a gym like Travis’s—”
Mandy rushed forward and tackled him.
He laughed nervously from flat on his back. “Does this mean yes?”
“Yes, you silly man.” She kissed him hard. “I’ve been waiting for twelve years.”
He chuckled and pulled the solitaire, round-cut diamond on a silver band out of the box. “Would you hate me if I told you I’ve had this ring for twelve years?”
“What?” She pulled back, balancing with a hand on his meaty chest.
“Saved every penny I earned in the garage for a year and bought it in Columbus so you wouldn’t find out.” He chuffed as if remembering. “The day you broke up with me, I had it in my pocket.” He lifted her left hand. “I was about to ask you to marry me when you told me never to contact you again.”
“Oh, Chance!” Horror filled Mandy.
“I didn’t want to enter the Navy without you, and the only way we could stay together was if we were married.” He sat up, taking her with him. Nestling her on his lap and in his arms, he kissed her gently. “Since I’ve always imagined being your husband, I couldn’t wait to drop on one knee.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Don’t say anything.” He slid the ring on her finger and somehow it still fit. “I meant what I said earlier, I would have made you miserable if I’d stayed, and you would have hated leaving your dad and the garage if I’d convinced you to leave. I’m proud of who we are now and I’m impossibly more in love with you than before.” He squeezed her fingers. “I understand the true meaning of home and you’re it for me. No matter where we live, I’ll be home.”
End of SEAL’s Homecoming
SEAL & Veteran Series: Book One
Blurb
All her life, Rachel Winchester has fought against the idea that she was nothing but white trash destined for Loserville. Now, it seems all that fighting was for nothing. Sure, she’s running a successful B&B and, yes, she finally had her way with a man she’s crushed on for forever—Harris McCallister, the guy she’s flirted with for years; the guy she’s thought about and pined for. She’s finally feeling good about the future when—bam—she gets pregnant. True or not, in her world, nothing says white trash more than an unmarried pregnant woman. Worse, her “loving” mother is threatening her over the B&B and the property it sits on, all because of a silly legend about a pirate’s buried treasure.
Harris doesn’t know what it is about Rachel, but he’s always been drawn to her. With her brightly dyed hair and sexy-as-hell tattooed body, she’s impossible to ignore—and drives him crazy in all the best ways. Finding out she’s carrying his baby has him thinking things he’s never thought before. Thoughts he brutally pushes away. Returning to active duty as a Marine Raider is what he wants, not settling down and playing house. He’ll stick around just long enough to make sure Rachel and the baby-to-be are safe from increasingly disturbing attacks they both believe has to do with an old legend about a pirate’s buried treasure. The longer he stays, though, the tougher returning to duty is becoming. But when the time comes to head back to the Marines, he has to make the toughest decision of his life—duty to his country, or life with the woman he loves.
Prologue
Thirty-Two Days Ago—Dive Bar near Parris Island, South Carolina Marine Base
Harris McCallister slapped the empty long-neck bottle onto the scarred wooden bar table and lifted his gaze toward the bartender working her ass off behind the long counter. Between the off-duty military personnel, local civilians needing to forget their day, and the loud music he did his best to tune out, he’d be waiting until hell froze over before he caught her attention.
In the dive bar’s main dining area, a group of young women decked out in skimpy dresses broke into jubilant laughter as they raised shot glasses, then downed the colorful liquid. A few shuddered with sour faces while others smacked their lips and grinned. In one of the booths along the perimeter, four guys in worn fatigues watched the women with calculated expressions, probably looking for an opening to move in.
Harris snorted. The off-duty Marines would have no problem picking up the ladies. Those women were classic tag-chasers—women who targeted military men in hopes of leading them by their dog tags straight to the altar. Why else would the women hold their celebration in a crappy bar popular with Marines who traveled across the bridge from Parris Island?
Marines such as Harris. God, he was only twenty-nine years old, but he felt ancient. Slumping even further in the uncomfortable wooden-backed stool, he slid the empty bottle next to its equally empty buddy. Should he have another? Twirling the glass so the label faced him, he answered himself, how else are you going to get numbingly drunk?
Excellent point. He peered at the bartender again, but could not catch her eye. Shocker. Searching for the waitress who had served him the previous two beers, he found her tied up with a large group taking up three of the five tables in the bar area. Shit.
Another pang ripped through his heart, and he smoothed a hand over his olive-green T-shirt in an attempt to sooth it. Not that his attempt did a thing to help.
Too many goddamn funerals threatened to steal his sanity. First, his best friend and fellow teammate had stepped on an IED on their last mission in a Colombian hellhole. And second, his unit’s barely stateside and still reeling from hauling a casket home, when Harris gets the call that his father passed away.
A hard lump formed in Harris’s throat and he swiped his hand over his face to push the tears threatening to fall back into submission. Choosing between attending his best friend’s funeral or his father’s was a choice straight out of hell. But not really a choice in the end. He put in for bereavement leave, was granted a thirty-day pass, and made arrangements to head home to Springwell, Georgia. It had been too long s
ince he’d seen his two brothers due to them all being in the military, though in different branches. The oldest brother, Chance, became a Navy SEAL, while the youngest McCallister, Lee, became a sniper for the Army Rangers. And Harris became a Marine Raider, basically the Marine’s version of the SEALs and Rangers.
They’re not in the military anymore, his conscience piped up. Right. Both his brothers recently retired but for two contrasting reasons. Regardless of their status, they’d all be together again tomorrow. And it only took their father dying to kick off the reunion. Fuck. He rubbed at his aching heart again. They’d need him to be his typical level-headed, supportive, middle-child-peace-keeping self. And he would, but that meant tonight, he could get stupid drunk as a way to anesthetize the pain.
Speaking of anesthesia, he glanced toward the last place he saw his waitress, then jerked upright on his stool. All thoughts about ordering another beer fled as he gazed at Rachel Winchester strolling toward him. All five-feet-two inches of sexiness packed into her petite frame kept striding closer with her denim-clad hips swaying provocatively while her pale-yellow tank top showed off perfect breasts and colorful tattoos filling her bared skin. She frequently changed the color of her long, straight hair and today she was sporting a muted shade of purple. With all the beautiful ink, the bright revolving hair color, and her small physique, she reminded him of a fairy—a naughty fairy he constantly fantasized about.
Oh, the dirty things he imagined doing to her and her reciprocating in turn kept him well primed when he had to take care of his own needs. For years. Ever since he’d joined his Raiders unit and got stationed at Parris Island. She lived in town and used to bartend here before she inherited a property and established a B&B…or at least that’s what he’d heard. When he was stateside, he had constantly planted his ass at the bar counter just to flirt outrageously with her. It had been a massive disappointment to come back from a mission earlier in the year and find out she had quit. He hadn’t seen her since…until now. God had finally showed some pity on him.
“By the look in your eye,” Rachel stated in a throaty voice, stopping beside Harris’s table, “a girl would think you missed her.”
Harris propped his elbows on the small round table. “By the way you disappeared, a guy would think you didn’t care about him at all.”
Rachel ran her forefinger and thumb down her purple-dyed hair and studied his face. The twinkle in her eyes dimmed, and a crease formed at the corner of her mouth. “What’s wrong?”
Harris sighed and slumped back in the chair. Retorts that normally came easily deserted him, and he didn’t have it in him to keep up the act.
Warmth filled his forearm, and he stared at the hand curling around his muscle. A shiver stole through him at the contact, and he closed his eyes against the godforsaken tears that threatened to fall again. Christ. He did not need to break down in the dive bar, and he especially didn’t want to lose it in front of Rachel.
“Harris?” Rachel whispered, her breath puffing against his cheek causing another tremor to rock through him for a completely different reason.
How messed up was that? He was getting turned on in the middle of trying not to sob like a baby.
“Talk to me,” Rachel urged, moving closer so her hip rested against his thigh.
His hands clenched into fists at the argument flaring in his mind. Did he dare share his grief with his fantasy woman or would that ruin everything they’d established and slam the door on the possibility of ever sleeping with her? Opening his eyes, he gazed at her concerned face only a foot from his own. Her blue eyes deepened as she met his stare.
Fuck it. He needed a friend and she fit the bill at the moment. “I lost my best friend on our last mission,” he managed to croak past the re-forming lump in his throat, “and I just found out my father passed away.”
Her hand on his arm spasmed as her eyes shined with empathy. “Oh, Harris,” she breathed. “I’m so sorry.”
His eyes traced her plump, red-lined lips, and he suddenly had no interest in sharing anymore. Visions of finally tasting those lips clouded his mind, and he didn’t want to hold back any longer.
Leaning forward—
“Do you trust me?”
Her question froze him in place. “What?” he asked, trying to force his muzzy mind to work again.
She grazed her other hand over his cheek. “I want to get you out of here. Do you trust me?”
Only two brain cells were able to process her words, but they were enough to piece together that whatever she was offering would be a hell of a lot better than what he’d find at the bottom of a bottle. “Yes.”
Harris climbed the varnished stairs behind Rachel, splitting his gaze from staring at her amazing ass and admiring the rest of the old plantation-style house she’d fixed up and turned into a bed-and-breakfast. “You’ve been open a year now?”
Rachel peered over her shoulder. “Yep.” She turned back. “I don’t have any lodgers tonight, so we have the place to ourselves.”
“The place” had five bedrooms distributed between upstairs and down, plus acres of land that included the beach. “This is incredible. You and your mom inherited the property, right?”
They reached the second floor and she turned left. Passing two more bedrooms, she opened a closed door at the end of the hallway, and he blinked at the small two-bedroom apartment, complete with her own living room and bathroom.
She closed the door behind him and the top of her head barely reached his shoulders. “Yes, but she has nothing to do with the B&B. I sunk my own money into it and applied for all the licenses myself.”
“You’re amazing—”
She pushed him against the door and wound a hand around the back of his neck. He needed no further prompting. Grabbing her hips, he yanked her closer and dipped his head.
The first taste of her lips exploded over his and he groaned. God, this was better than anything he’d envisioned. Needing more, he tilted his head and adjusted their mouths, feeding on her exquisite taste.
Her stomach scraped over his hard dick, straining against his fatigues as she lifted on her toes, wrenching another groan from him. She captured his groan and offered one of her own as she parted her lips and licked at the seam of his mouth. Opening on command, he sucked on her tongue as it invaded him then followed it back to her own mouth where he conquered the space.
Without pausing, he picked her up and carried her to the couch. The second her back hit the cushions, she wrenched her mouth free and licked the side of his throat as her fingers wormed between them to his belt buckle. Yanking her tank top up, he only took a second to admire the lacy black cups of her bra before he sucked on a hardened nipple.
She arched, pausing her bid to spread his unzipped pants. “Yes,” she breathed.
With his teeth, he anchored the cup below her beautiful breast and got to work on unfastening her jeans while he worshiped her nipple again.
Crying out, she arched even higher, then gripped him through his boxer briefs.
Ecstasy rippled through his dick, flooding his balls to the point he worried he’d come in her hand like a teenager. Christ, it had been too long since he’d had sex. Months, due to slogging through the Colombian jungle on his last mission. And now he finally had Rachel underneath him. His fantasy fairy.
He was not fucking this up.
Twisting out of her grasp, he planted his foot on the floor and grabbed her jeans by the waist. She lifted her hips, helping him while she tore her tank top off completely. In that magical way women had, she had her bra flying in the air before he untied his second boot.
All the breath left his lungs. “Christ, you’re beautiful.” He gobbled up every inch of her creamy flesh. Tattoos he couldn’t wait to lick but had no patience to study at the moment covered her body.
As a reply, she sat up and impatiently tugged on his T-shirt until she got it off, then she swallowed hard as her eyes darkened impossibly deeper. They tracked over his skin as he finally dropped
the last of his clothes onto the pile.
Before he realized her intent, she lunged forward and grasped his hard cock and licked the end. He sucked in air between his teeth and dropped his head back. Warm moisture ran the length of him as her tongue caressed him. Snapping his head forward, he couldn’t miss a single second of what he’d always dreamed to see.
“I’m not going to last if you keep that up,” he bit out, hating to stop her from exploring him, but he needed to be inside her.
She snatched the condom that had gone to Colombia and back out of his tight fist and ripped the foil open with her teeth. He took the rubber from her, needing to roll it on himself in hopes it would delay the orgasm hovering too closely.
“Pick your position,” he managed to utter through his lusty haze. Until he took the edge off, he didn’t have much control over himself. Offering her the choice was the best he could do until the second round. Then he could take his time exploring her.
Her feet hit the floor and she darted to the couch’s plush armrest. He almost came in his hand when she bent and peered at him over her shoulder.
A perfect round ass lifted in the air, begging for him to mold and bite the succulent mounds that topped visibly wet pink folds. “You are a fantasy.” He moved to stand behind her and lined his cock up to her center. With patience he didn’t have, he slowly entered and shuddered at the wet heat surrounding his tip.
“Don’t be gentle,” she breathed, rising to the balls of her feet and arching into him, swallowing more of his dick. “Take me like you mean it.”
“Fuck.” He clamped onto her hips and drove inside her, not stopping until she took every inch.
She cried out and quivered, slapping her hands onto the cushion and pushing back into him.
Ecstasy shuddered through him and he had only a single thought before he lost himself inside her: walking away from Rachel Winchester after tonight would not be easy.