Diana frowned. “Of course, we have to tell them. I tell Patrick everything.”
“Not this. Please. You know they’ll make our lives miserable. Besides, it’s early in this, um, relationship. It might fizzle out long before the wedding.”
Bethany and Diana exchanged looks and then both of them burst into laughter.
“Fizzle out?” Bethany snorted. “After seeing him, seeing how he touched you, and kissed you.” She sighed and shook her head. “This relationship dying before my wedding would be like trying to put out a house fire with a squirt gun.”
“I agree,” Diana said. “You’d be a fool not to hold on to him until September.”
Holly groaned. There was no way she could keep this non-existent relationship going for over four months. There were tons of couple events planned leading up to the wedding. How would she ever explain Ben—no, he’d said Benjamin—not coming with her or no one in the family ever laying eyes on him after tonight?
Crap.
She tossed back a tequila shot and waved the table server over. “I need about four more of these.”
The only thing that kept Holly from falling asleep from her alcoholic intake was the dance floor. She decided to ignore what she could not deal with tonight and joined Bethany and Diana to move to the live music. As the night worn on, she danced and drank and laughed more than she had in ten years.
At eleven-thirty, they collected at their table to finish off any remaining booze and settle the bill.
“I need to get out of here before my brothers get here,” Holly slurred. She stood and swayed. “I’ll be fine,” she assured the two women. “Just need to get my feet under me.”
Before she could take a step, Benjamin slipped up beside her, wrapping a strong arm around her waist.
“Looks like you ladies had quite the night.”
“We did.” Diana pointed at Holly. “As you probably know, she does not hold her liquor well.”
“I do, too,” Holly protested. “I hold him by ears.” She roared with laughter at her joke.
His lips twitched. “I hope you ladies have rides home because I’m pretty sure Tuck, the bartender, is headed this way to collect car keys and call cabs.”
“We’re covered,” Holly said, her arms flailing in the air. “I have my car. And my brothers are picking up the girls.”
“Yeah, you’re not driving,” Benjamin said.
“I can drive,” Holly said, pouting.
“Tell you what,” Benjamin said. “If you can walk to the front door without staggering or bumping into a table, we can talk about it.”
Holly tried to snap her fingers. Nothing happened. She studied her fingers as her thumb tried to connect with her middle finger. Somehow, it kept missing.
“I got this,” she said after multiple failed attempts at the finger snap. She took two steps, bumped into the next table and stumbled backwards. She would have hit the floor if two muscular arms hadn’t caught her.
“I’ve got you,” he said, swooping her up into his arms. “Where’s your purse?”
“Aww,” Bethany said. “Just like Richard Gere and Debra Winger in An Office and A Gentleman. So romantic.”
With a deep-throated chuckled, he said, “Not an officer, but I try to be a gentleman….most of the time.” Then he winked.
“Are you winking at my sisters-in-law?” Holly said, aiming a glare at him. “My brothers are gonna whup your ass.”
He chuckled.
Diana handed Holly’s purse to Benjamin. “You’ll get her home?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Holly cuddled against his chest and rested her head on his shoulder. He smelled so good, like citrus or lime or something. She sniffed his chin, then nuzzled his neck.
The next thing she knew, Benjamin was unbuckling her seatbelt.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“Home.”
“Your home?”
He chuckled. “No, your home.”
She gasped. “How did you know where I lived? Did you ask someone in the government for my address?”
With another chuckle, he said, “I looked at your driver’s license. Can you walk?”
“Of course, I can walk.”
She climbed down from his truck and dropped to her knees, the grass in the front yard cushioning her fall.
“Oops,” she said. “Didn’t warn me about the first step.” She laughed and rolled over on her back, spreading her arms wide. “Oh, look at the moon. Isn’t it pretty?”
“Beautiful.”
“So are you.” She closed her eyes, but just for a minute.
* * *
An annoying buzz echoed in her head. Without opening her eyes—which seemed to be glued shut—Holly swatted at the fly, or maybe it was a mosquito.
The sound stopped, but before she could fall asleep again, the buzzing was back. There was a pattern. Buzz. Stop. Buzz. Stop.
With a groan, she realized it was her phone.
With eyes remaining shut, she fumbled around on her bedside table until her fingers touched the vibrating offender.
“Hello?” she whispered into the phone. She had no voice other than a raspy whisper.
“Mom. Guess what?” Katie screamed into the phone.
Holly flinched at the noise. “I don’t know, honey. What?”
“Aunt Diana said that Hillary could stay all day and all night with Grams, and Grams said if I wanted to stay, too it’d be fine. Plus, she’d taking us out for manicures and a movie. That’s okay, right? I can stay?”
“Let me talk to Grams.”
“Good morning, sunshine,” her mother said brightly.
“Shh. You don’t have to yell.”
Her mother laughed, very very loudly.
Holly groaned.
“Patrick came by this morning for breakfast before he left for work with your dad. Said Diana was, um,, let’s see… How did he say it? A tad under the weather?” Her heartless, mean mother laughed again. “Sounds like quite the party last night.”
“I barely had anything to drink,” Holly protested. “I think I might be coming down with a stomach bug.”
“Uh-huh. More like a tequila worm than a stomach bug. Anyway, leave Katie here with us. You get some rest. We’ll touch base later today.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
“Oh, and Patrick said your new guy was there last night.”
Holly moaned. Damn Diana couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “What else did he say?”
“That you had already left the bar when he got there, and that he was sorry he didn’t get to meet your mystery fellow.”
Holly rolled over to her back and put her forearm across her eyes. “More like he was sorry he didn’t to interrogate him.”
“Why don’t you bring your young man to dinner next weekend? I’m sure we’d all enjoy getting to know him.”
“Doubtful. I’m not even sure I’m going to keep seeing him.”
“That’s not what Diana said. She told Patrick that he was your ‘plus one’ for Lawrence’s wedding, and since that’s four months off, sounds like he’s going to be around a while.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“I gotta go, Mom. I don’t feel so good.”
“Drink some water and take some aspirin. You’ll feel better this afternoon. Are you still planning on taking the girls to the beach with you tomorrow?”
Holly sighed. That’s right. She had to work tomorrow. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
“That’s fine.” Her mother chuckled. “Hangovers suck,” was her closing line before she clicked off.
With tremendous effort, Holly forced her eyelids to open. Daggers of pain hit her, and she slammed them shut again. It was going to be a long day.
When she’d been fumbling for her phone, her hand had touched a glass. As she didn’t usually keep kitchen glasses in her bedroom, she rolled to her side, used her hand to shade her eyes, and looked at the bedside table. There was a glass of water, a bottle of aspirin, and a yel
low sticky note.
Good Morning.
Drink the water.
Take three aspirin.
Eat something.
Took your car fob. Will bring car to your house this morning. Will leave fob in pottery frog on back porch.
Call me when you feel like explaining last night. 555-890-8888
BB
She took three aspirin and drank the water. Her stomach rebelled at the idea of food, and no freaking way she was calling him. At least, she wasn’t calling him until she could explain without dying of embarrassment.
Besides, his note was little bossy, right? What if she didn’t want to take three aspirin and drink the water? What if she wanted to take a hair of the dog that bit her?
She noticed there was an arrow pointing down under the initials. She flipped the piece of paper over.
I don’t suggest taking a hair of the dog. Been there. Done that. Doesn’t work.
BB
She couldn’t decide if he was an asshole or clairvoyant.
Within twenty minutes, the aspirin kicked in, and the idea of food wasn’t as repugnant as before. She threw on a robe to cover her nakedness and headed for her kitchen, stopping in the living room to look out her front window. Her car was parked in the driveway.
Crap. Did he have to be so nice?
She’d have to call him, if nothing else, to thank him for getting her car home.
Oh, and for leaving water and aspirin at her bedside.
Her one concern was…She’d woken up nude, which wasn’t uncommon for her, but had Mr. Nice Guy taken advantage of that situation last night?
Had they had sex? And if they had, she’d remember that, right?
Chapter Three
The team had done the ops debrief yesterday when they’d gotten back to the states from Guatemala. This morning’s rehash of the clusterfuck mission had revealed no new information nor insight. The VIP package had been killed before his team accrued any intel on location. An op could succeed or fail based on intel, and theirs had been not only sparse, but wrong. In the past, there had been times when his team had pulled out a win even with weak information, but this mission had been one screw up after another, and none of them had been based on his team’s performance.
Day one in country, mission intel had led to a dry hole. No hostage. No rebel warriors.
Day two, HAVOC had the team chasing their tails like a bunch a wet-behind-the-ears rookies. The first piece of valuable intel had come from the team’s recon of the area, not from command.
By day three, the hostage taken from Doctors Without Borders had been located. Unfortunately, he’d been shot at least twenty-four hours before he was discovered.
Benjamin hated failed missions. He despised bringing home a dead hostage, even if his team bore no direct responsibility for the execution. But during debrief, the question was tossed on the table if his team’s recon missions in the area had somehow forced the rebels’ hand, causing them to react with dumping the doctor. There was no firm answer to that, but the possibility ate at his gut.
His team was his family, the only family he acknowledged anyway. Their missions were critical to the safety of the nation. When something went wrong, he felt it to his core.
The team had been released until Monday, but of course, all that meant was they had a few hours away from Camp Pendleton. Benjamin appreciated his guys had personal time to spend with girlfriends and families, but he needed to spend more time reexamining the mission to see where they could have performed better.
“Get out of your head, C-Note,” Jacob Fowler, his second-in-command said. “You can hula-hoop down main street, and nothing is going to change. We did good. Hell, with the shitty intel, we did better than good.”
“We brought home a dead hostage,” Benjamin said with snarl. “How is that good?”
“We gave his family closure. The guy was dead long before we had a chance to rescue him. Now at least, his family isn’t sitting imagining all kinds of horrible things that might happen to him.”
Benjamin slapped the metal frame of his lockers. “Fuckers.”
“You know it,” Jacob agreed. “Come on. The guys are getting together a pickup basketball game. It’ll be good for you to work out some of that stress.”
Two hours of sweaty, no-holds-barred, hip-bumping basketball was exactly what he, and the team, needed to burn off their frustrations. Luckily, none of them left the game with more than a few bruises, which for this competitive group, was somewhat of a minor miracle.
Normally, he’d head home to shower, but after being out of country for a week, the food in his fridge was probably green when it should be another color, or showing the black shade of death. He had to do some grocery shopping. and frankly, he thought he smelled a little ripe.
After showering on base, he packed away his clothes and tossed the duffle bag into the rear seat of his truck. Before he could start the engine, his cell phone vibrated across the dash.
Never one to answer the phone without at least seeing who was breaking into his day, he smiled as the name “Holly Maxwell” flashed.
“Blackwell.”
“Ben?” Her voice was tentative as though she wasn’t sure if she’d reached the right person.
“Good morning, Holly,” he said. “How are you feeling?”
She chuckled, and he heard a smile in her voice.
“A little rough. Thank you for the water and aspirin. That was unexpected but deeply appreciated.”
“Glad to be of service.” He waited for the dinner invitation he knew would come. They always did.
“Thank you playing along last night with my sisters-in-law—well, one almost sister-in-law. It’s a long story why I lied to them, a story I’m sure you don’t want to hear. Anyway, thank you for getting me and my car home safely.”
He continued to wait for that dinner reservation disguised as “I owe you a favor.”
“Absolutely,” he said. “Wasn’t a problem at all.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute, then, “And don’t worry. I’ll tell everyone next weekend that we tragically split up. That should get them off my back for a couple of weeks.”
“Off your back…?,” he repeated, still not sure where this conversation was headed.
“Well, thanks again. Take care.”
And she clicked off.
He pulled his phone away from his ear, wondering if he’d dropped the call. After all, he’d been down this road before…a few favors, dinner, some sex, and then move on. Wash, rinse, and repeat.
Not that he’d ever done a favor in hopes of getting sex. Not at all. Women were attracted to him. He had a mirror. He knew what he looked like, and he worked damned hard to keep himself in prime condition. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d asked a woman out. They asked him.
Except Holly Maxwell. Hell, she was gorgeous and sexy and had damned near stopped his heart with her lifeguard attire. In her panic the previous evening, she’d been so damn cute, like she’d been drowning and he was the only one who could rescue her, not that he’d done much more than get her and her car home safely.
Well, hell.
He tossed his phone into the passenger seat. This past week had been one he hoped never to repeat. This brush-off was the cherry on his crap sundae.
He pulled away from the base and headed to the grocery store, seriously one of his least favor activities. He’d driven about two blocks when a Coronado police car pulled up behind him and turned on its lights. Reflexively, he eased off the gas, even though he was well under the speed limit, and pulled to the curb. There, he turned off the engine and got out his license and registration. In his youth, he’d had enough run-ins with the law to know what to do, and especially, what not to do.
A young patrol officer stepped up to his driver’s side and gestured for Benjamin to lower the window, which he did.
“License and registration,” the cop asked in a harsh tone.
Benjamin handed over the requested
paperwork.
The cop studied the license. “Do you know why I pulled you over?”
“I have no idea.”
The cop gave a single nod and said, “Stay here.” Then he walked back to his cruiser.
“Sit. Stay. Be a good boy,” Benjamin muttered under his breath. “I could snap you like a twig.”
Of course, he would never challenge a cop or get into a fight with a civilian. Command would hand him his ass on a pike. Still, this punk had had no reason to pull him over.
In a minute, the young cop strutted back up to Benjamin’s window. “Navy SEAL?”
“That’s right. Can I ask why I was stopped?”
“You did a rolling stop through a stop sign. Failure to yield.”
“Hmm, I don’t remember doing that.”
“Well, you did. You’re not questioning my eyesight, are you?” The cop’s voice suddenly grew harsh.
“I’m not, no. I’m simply saying I remember stopping at the four-way stop.”
The young patrol office studied him. “The name’s Danny Long. Mean anything to you?”
“No, sorry. Should it?”
“You’re dating my sister.”
Benjamin began flashing names and pictures through his mind, but he couldn’t think of one woman he knew with the last name Long.
“I think you’re mistaken.”
The cop’s mouth tightened into a line. “Are you calling me a liar?”
What the hell was wrong with this kid? Was he looking to get his ass kicked on this sunny Saturday afternoon?
“I’m not calling you a liar,” he said slowly. “I’m saying I’m not dating anyone with the last name of Long.”
The kid nodded. “Right. Her last name is Maxwell. Holly Maxwell.”
Benjamin’s eyes opened wide. “Holly is your sister?”
“That’s right and we Longs look out for each other.”
“I’m sure you do.”
He removed his sunglasses and glared into the driver’s window. “You’re lucky I’m the one who stopped you and not Patrick or Lawrence. I’m the nice brother.”
“Good to know.”
“So, you’re only going to get one warning. Hurt Holly, and we’ll make your life a living hell.”
Hot SEAL, Confirmed Bachelor Page 4