Wet N Wild Navy SEALs

by Tawny Weber

“Nice to see you could make it, Lieutenant. Did you forget? You and I are running ten miles this afternoon.”

  She hadn’t forgotten.

  They reached the two mile point. The rest of the formation turned as a unit and headed back to the compound. And the two of them continued on alone.

  The first time since Peck’s party.

  Miller checked his watch and dropped the pace. Still pushing the limits of her endurance, she suspected it barely affected him. They continued for several minutes in silence.

  Her calves ached from the sand. But she kept pumping her legs, and they were getting stronger by the mile. SEALs had running down to a science.

  “Rest next week. Or at least cut back to your regular running routine. There’s a high risk of stress fracture in the third week of sand torture.”

  Her third week of sand torture, her fourth and final week of the feasibility study. She’d have plenty to do as it was. And then she’d leave. “Okay.” She breathed out.

  Sweat beaded, trickled and dripped the length of her body. She preferred to run in sweats, but peeled off her sweat-soaked shirt and tied it around her waist without breaking stride.

  “Ready to cry uncle?” he asked.

  “In your dreams, Sailor.” She gritted her teeth and pushed on. This had been personal right from the start. Every swim stroke, every footfall, he taunted her to give up.

  Little did he know, Go Navy, Beat Miller had become her silent mantra. Right up there with It’s Miller Time. Which were those times of day when she looked forward to just being in the same space as him.

  Minutes ticked past without words. Her breathing even, her footing sure, matched his. He ran so close beside her, she skimmed the water’s edge. The occasional wave lapped her feet and she longed to dive into the surf as the afternoon sun beat down.

  “That has to be ten miles,” she said finally. “And we still haven’t turned around.”

  “Eleven point three. Because that’s my place right there. I was shooting for fourteen. But if you can’t handle it...” He increased his speed.

  “What!” She raced him until her lungs screamed for a reprieve. Gasping for air, she stopped and braced her hands on her knees.

  “Walk it out.”

  Pressing a hand to her cramping side, she moved slowly forward as he circled.

  “Was that uncle I heard?”

  “Yes, and it was coming from you. Your shoe’s untied.” In the split second it took for him to look, she shoved him toward the water. He didn’t budge. Instead he wrapped his arms around her legs and tackled her, sending them both crashing to the surf.

  They played in the water like a couple of kids, splashing and dunking and roughhousing. Until Tabby broke free and ran toward the house he’d pointed out as his. He scrambled after her, once again tackling her to the ground. They fell together, laughing and breathless and covered in sand.

  “I think it’s in my underwear,” she said, rolling onto her back and into him. She gazed into his eyes, and the laughter died with the awareness. His gaze traveled to her lips and stayed there.

  She felt his hot heavy breath mingle with her own.

  Water and sweat. Skin and sand. His lips a breath away from hers, she heard his muffled oath.

  Once again Marc’s career flashed before his eyes. What the hell was he doing?

  He’d reprimanded himself time and again for those few moments they’d spent dancing in the moonlight. His self-imposed punishment had been to avoid being alone with her and he’d managed to do that for two very long weeks.

  But at his first opportunity here he was on top of her.

  “My apologies, Lieutenant,’’ he said, pulling himself together and to his feet. He offered her a hand up.

  She put her hand in his, and he savored the physical contact. “No apology necessary, Commander.” She dropped his hand and brushed the sand from her backside.

  “You can clean up inside. Get the sand out of your pants,” he said, trying to lighten the mood. He walked across the beach and up to his deck. She looked over his shoulder while he punched in his security code “Memorizing it?”

  “Just curious. You know, to see if you picked your birthday or something.”

  “My mother’s.”

  “Your mother?”

  “Call Mom on Sundays like every dutiful, loving son. Make it a point to see her once a year. And shower her with gifts on her birthday and Mother’s Day.” She was gaping like a blowfish. “What? You didn’t think I had one?”

  “Doesn’t everybody? I’m just surprised. You never talk about your family.”

  He should have never opened up the subject. “And I really don’t want to talk about them now.”

  “Oh.”

  Well, at least he’d found the perfect mood killer. He led the way through the family room to the kitchen. “Water?”

  “Yes, please. You have a nice place here.”

  “The owner is putting it up for sale. I’m thinking about buying it.” In fact, he’d just made up his mind. He opened the refrigerator and tossed her a bottle over the breakfast counter. She caught it and used it to brush the hair back from her damp forehead.

  He grabbed one for himself and twisted off the lid. Then gulped half the bottle in one swallow.

  Tabitha leaned against the breakfast counter, drinking with leisurely sips. She looked him over carefully. “I won’t pry. But if you ever want to talk about it...I’m a great listener.”

  “I won’t.” Dropping the subject, he moved to her side of the barrier, surveying her from the top of her strawberry-blond head to the tips of her sand-covered sneakers.

  His gaze settled on a bead of moisture that started just below her mint-green sport bra and trickled past her navel, disappearing in the rolled band of her sweat pants.

  He wanted to follow the salty trails with his tongue. He wanted to strip the sweaty, sand-covered clothes from her body and delve into deeper pleasures.

  “Do you want to shower?” The words came without warning.

  “What?” She looked startled by his question and he knew what she thought. Oh, he’d meant it that way all right. But he recovered quickly. “You can shower upstairs and I can run your clothes through the wash. I have some work to do here before we head back to base.”

  “Sure. Thanks.”

  He led the way to his bedroom and pointed out the bathroom. “There’s a robe hanging on the back of the door. Leave your clothes outside the bathroom door and I’ll get them.”

  He left her and stomped heavily downstairs, heading to the second bathroom, where a cold shower awaited him.

  Tabby dried off, then stepped from the shower stall. Wrapping herself in Marc’s terry robe, she buried her nose in the lapel and inhaled. His scent clung to the material. Like a sea breeze off a tropic island, he was a man of the elements—sea, air, land and fire. She wanted to touch that fire. But she didn’t dare.

  The repercussions could be serious.

  Standing before the steamed vanity mirror, she traced a happy face while her face split into its own contented smile. There was something intimate about being in the man’s bathroom.

  It said a lot about him. He was meticulous, anal really, and she had fun moving things around on the counter. Out of curiosity she opened a bottle of cologne, Aqua Velva. She scrunched her nose. Not him.

  She went through the rest, tipping bottles and dabbing some on her wrist. Brut, Old Spice, an array of cheap aftershave. Not one smelled exactly like him. Not even the combination.

  Disappointed, she closed the lid on the last one.

  Picking up his brush, she ran it through her hair, each stroke sending shivers down her spine. She didn’t dare use his toothbrush, but she found several still in the package while rummaging through a drawer. She opened one and squeezed on toothpaste, then brushed. Either he changed his toothbrush often or he was prepared for overnight guests.

  Women guests? One woman? She stopped brushing and spit. There was no evidence among the toiletr
ies to support that assumption.

  Since the one he used and all the packaged toothbrushes were blue, she opted for the explanation that he was obsessed with oral hygiene. But she couldn’t escape her curiosity about the women in his life. Until now she’d thought of him as available. Certainly not for herself because after all, he was her boss. But available.

  Though that didn’t mean he’d always been.

  She ruled out a steady relationship. Who’d put up with him for long? That left love ’em and leave ’em one-nighters. Rinsing, she spit again and wiped her mouth. Putting her toothbrush next to his, she pulled out a length of floss. Well, they could have him.

  He was more trouble than he was worth. And too damn sexy for his own good. And she’d have to sacrifice everything in order to be the woman in his life.

  Of course, that didn’t mean she couldn’t daydream about it. To counter that she started to think about all his faults, again.

  Major ego topped the list. She stared at her reflection. Bright pink flushed her cheeks. Just how big was that ego, anyway? She checked her smile, running her tongue along her teeth.

  She noted her clothes had disappeared from the pile by the door. She’d dawdled over her shower, but she knew they wouldn’t be done yet. In the bedroom a mirrored closet ran the length of two walls. The L shape was broken only by the door to the hallway. She glanced at the ceiling. At least there was none up there.

  An incredibly large bed was centered along another wall.

  Too curious for her own good, she opened the larger of the two closets. Uniforms hung in neat rows by length and in color order, whites, khakis, cammies in blues, greens and desert browns, navy blues and blacks. Several pairs of polished shoes and boots lined the closet floor. Anal.

  What had she hoped to find? Some clue to the man, or the father he didn’t want to talk about? Her hand ran down the sleeve of a uniform jacket to the gold braid. She sensed there was more to the story than a woman who’d had an affair during her forty-year marriage. It was Tabby’s nature not to assume anything. Still she couldn’t help wondering. Adoption, maybe—a foster child—there were several possibilities.

  A built-in dresser with a false front opened like a door to reveal a selection of ties and belts hung to one side on a spinning rack, which she tested by giving it a whirl. On the other side, a shelf held a tray filled with pocket change, and typical Navy stuff—shoe polish, lighter fluid, Brasso and a neat stack of clean rags. Beneath the shelf, slim drawers lined in black velvet revealed ribbons, medals and medallions.

  For a long moment she stared at his Trident, remembering the last time he’d worn it before she shut the drawer.

  To the right was a dresser. White T-shirts and briefs in the first drawer. Green and black T-shirts and green and black boxers in the next two.

  Tabby found civilian clothes in the smaller closet, also hanging by color, blue being predominant. Really anal. But at least they ran the spectrum from light to dark. This closet held two more dressers. The top drawer of one again filled with underwear, but alongside the plain white boxers were a stack of silk boxers.

  She lifted a pair of red ones and held them up.

  Did she dare?

  Marc sat in the den in front of his computer screen. He’d taken that ice-cold shower, rounding up a clean T-shirt and shorts from the laundry room. Then he’d gone back to his bedroom.

  Instead of finding a pile of clothes in front of the bathroom, he’d found the door ajar and the sandy pile of wet clothes just inside on the tile floor.

  Consideration? Or invitation?

  He’d heard the pulsing beat of the shower, and the soft sweet strains of her humming. He could have inched the door open and watched her silhouetted behind frosted glass.

  The voyeur in him wanted to.

  But the very idea repulsed him. Besides, he didn’t need to, his fertile imagination had taken over and by the time he’d made it downstairs with the laundry he was thinking about a second cold shower.

  Until his thoughts moved to both the man who’d fathered him and the man who’d raised him. He understood why Warren Miller hadn’t been able to love him. But he didn’t understand why Miller had needed to beat that fact into him. Or worse, his mother.

  Those were Warren’s alcoholic years. At least he’d blamed the liquor. After that were his recovering alcoholic years in which he’d tried to make amends. In many ways those years were worse. There was always someone crawling inside Marc’s head trying to ensure he grew up healthy, normal, well-adjusted. His mother had stayed through the bad years of her marriage. He’d stayed only until he was old enough to leave. His family was closer now that Warren Miller was dead. If he’d had another last name to take he would have.

  But the man who’d fathered him was worse.

  And he was never going to be like either of them.

  He checked his watch again. “What in the hell is she doing up there?” The shower had stopped ages ago.

  What in the hell was he doing? He literally sat on the edge of his seat waiting for her. Was he hoping to get caught?

  He’d opened the file to his counter-study, one- hundred-plus pages, which he’d finished last night. He’d covered every aspect of a SEAL’s physical and mental conditioning, comparing women to men. He’d even provided combat statistics from Allied services that used female combatants. If combat stats didn’t force the bureaucrats in D.C. to open their eyes, then his cost analysis for renovating the training facilities would.

  By the time he set his computer to print, she still hadn’t come downstairs. He got up from the chair and headed to the kitchen. The whirl of the washing machine in the final throes of the spin cycle caught his attention. He headed to the laundry room. The washer stopped and he tossed everything to the dryer, setting it for forty minutes.

  Enough waiting! He took the stairs two at a time.

  He didn’t know what he’d expected to find, but it wasn’t Goldilocks sleeping in his bed.

  Marc stood in the doorway staring at the woman curled up in his white terry bathrobe. Her unusual hair tumbled across her face, drawing his attention to the delicate flush in her pink cheeks.

  When his heart started beating again, he stepped into the room. He could have let her go on sleeping, but he squatted by the bed and softly called her name.

  Chapter 14

  “Tiger, what’s that behind your back?” Her dad asked from behind his Sunday paper.

  How did he do that? “Nothing, Dad,” she lied. He turned down the corner of The Post and stared at her until she felt compelled to tell the truth. “It’s your hammer.”

  “Where are you going with it?”

  “Zach and Bowie won’t let me in the treehouse. They put up a No Girls Allowed sign and won’t give me the secret password. I helped you build it, too. So now I’m going to go tear it apart.”

  “I see. Boys can be mean sometimes, can’t they? But if you tear it apart there won’t be a treehouse.”

  She stopped to think about that for a minute. “I’ll build a new one.”

  “A lot of hard work went into that clubhouse. It’s not going to be easy building one from scratch.” He went back to reading his paper.

  Shoulders slumped, she moved slowly toward the back door. He was right. They’d spent all that time picking out the perfect tree, drawing up the plans, cutting the wood and then building it.

  “Tabitha,” her father lowered his paper, “bust the door down.”

  She skipped off to do just that and the next thing she knew she was lying on the ground looking up at the sky through leafy green branches.

  Zach and Bowie were yelling. “Mom! Mom!”

  “What happened?” Her mother asked, sounding anxious. “Tabitha? Tad! Get out here!”

  "She fell out of the tree!” Zach said. “And a board hit her on the head.”

  “Zach pushed her,” Bowie said.

  “Did not!”

  “Did too, liar!”

  “Did not, did not, did not...�
��

  “Tabitha?”

  “I busted the door down, Dad.”

  “Tabitha, wake up. Tiger...”

  “What did you just call me?” She stretched her way to wakefulness, sitting up in the middle of his bed.

  “Tiger,” Marc said. “You stretch like a cat, but a house pet’s too tame. Tabby doesn’t fit.”

  She laughed and shook her head. “My Dad used to call me Tigger.”

  “You’ve grown up since then.” He sniffed the air. “You smell like a men’s locker room.” He caught a glimpse of skin and a flash of red before she closed the gaping robe. “Are those my boxers?”

  “You didn’t expect me to walk around commando, did you? And I’m wearing whatever’s in your bathroom,” she confessed. “Do you mind?” She swung her feet over the side of the mattress and sat on the edge.

  “Actually, I do,” he teased. “They’re birthday and Christmas presents from my niece and nephews. Like the boxers. I don’t wear them.”

  “Oh.”

  He stared at her mouth as her kissable lips formed and held a perfect O.

  “Didn’t you ever hear, curiosity killed the cat?” She looked at him with more than curiosity. Desire shone in her eyes, and he knew it was reflected in his.

  “Are my clothes ready? I need to get dressed—” One minute hot, the next cold.

  He called her bluff. Nudging her knees apart, he knelt between them. His arms went around her waist and her arms went around his neck.

  She dropped her forehead to his. “I wasn’t...”

  “What?” he said, running the pad of his thumb along her full lower lip. “What weren’t you doing? I’m only a man, Tabitha. How much temptation do you think I can handle?” He brushed the drying hair back from her face. “But in one week, after your orders are cut...after you’re out of my command.... Pass that mile swim and fourteen-mile run and I’ll spring for dinner and a room at the Hotel del Coronado your last night in town.”

  Historic Hotel del Coronado where Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe had filmed Some Like It Hot, and where, judging from the look in her eyes, they’d set the night on fire. “I can get to know you. And you can have your way with me, or not. You lead and I’ll follow wherever you want to take us. But right now we both need to act professional. The uniform matters.”