Wet N Wild Navy SEALs

by Tawny Weber

  So, what to choose? She settled on a can of peaches. But she couldn't help but take inventory of the available resources.

  Bags of powdered sauces and dehydrated soups got her mind percolating over how she might transform the mystery meat into something less military and more homey. She'd long ago learned how to cook with limited resources, which, along with baking, occupied anxious waiting. Yeah, she'd think about options as she ate her peaches and scanned more of Robbie's files.

  As she approached her station, the computer around the corner from hers was dinging.

  "Should I check that?" she asked Asher.

  He shrugged. "It'd be Jake's family. They're the only ones who SKYPE him."

  Family. He'd been visiting his sister in or around Green Bay, Wisconsin when Robbie went missing. Did Jake know how lucky he was to have a family he could visit—family involved enough in his life they SKYPED him? She could barely remember what it was like to have Robbie around…Robbie, the only close family she had left. And now she might lose him, too.

  The realization knocked the breath from her. She sank into her chair, trembling so hard juice from the canned peaches spilled over her hand.

  She bowed her head, her hair falling forward around her face, and nibbled at peach slices as tears stung her eyes while Jake's personal computer continued to ping.

  Eventually the SKYPE alert stopped.

  She speared another peach wedge, pondering what Jake not answering his SKYPE must do to his family. Given his line of work, they had to be worried about him.

  She chewed at the peach, recalling how much she'd worried about Robbie during his absence. She'd have given anything for a SKYPE connection—to be able to see her brother even occasionally during the past two years. She barely even got to hear his voice, his communication with her mainly texts. The private chat room he'd set up was nice, but it wasn't like hearing his voice or seeing his face.

  And here Jake was off playing SEAL while his family worried. Did he even comprehend what he was doing to them? Nick Savage would have been aware…if he had a family.

  She contemplated what it meant that she'd never given her fictional hero a family. Had she done it because of his work or because she related better to the loner lifestyle she'd given him.

  Maybe she should reconsider his past. Book two was about to go into edits, but book three could be about a sibling gone missing and Savage reconnecting with his family while searching for his estranged sister.

  Or should it be a brother? She was getting all the research she'd need first hand, thanks to Robbie and Saint Security.

  But, what if searching for Robbie didn't end well?

  A knot tightened in Bliss' chest. She could not lose Robbie.

  Nick Savage would not lose his brother.

  She jabbed the last peach slice from the bottom of the can, silently cursing Jake for putting his family through a hell she knew all too well. Fingers sticky, she stalked back to the kitchen, tossed the empty can in the trash and washed the fork and her hands.

  As she dried her hands, she stared out the window above the sink. The dusty yard served as little more than a parking lot and the surrounding wall an even darker shade of dust blocked out the world beyond. She was stuck on the side of a mountain of forbidding terrain and, at its base, a city foreign to her. She wanted—needed—to find Robbie, and reading through his files was not doing the job.

  "Damn you Jake St. John for leaving me behind," she muttered, too unsettled to return to staring at a computer screen.

  From the kitchen doorway she called to Asher. "What do you guys eat around here?"

  "Depends on whether or not our local hire brings us something or if we're on our own."

  "Is your local hire feeding you guys tonight?"

  Asher swiveled around in his seat and grinned. "You say that like it's a bad thing."

  She shrugged, not sure herself how she'd meant it.

  "We get as many supplies from the indigenous population as we can," Asher said. "If you want your neighbors to keep quiet about the activities of the gringos camped in the big hacienda on the mountain, it helps to support the local economy."

  "Got it," Bliss said. "So, is your local cook feeding you tonight?"

  "Louisa cooks three times a week for us," Asher said, swiveling back toward the security screens. "Tonight's not one of those nights."

  "And when you're on your own, what do you eat?" she asked.

  "Depends on how much effort anyone wants to put into cooking—whether it's tacos, burritos, or enchiladas."

  "You always eat Mexican?"

  "Pretty much."

  Remembering the giant bottle of ketchup in the fridge, she asked, "Do you all like Mexican food so much you enjoy eating it every day?"

  Asher sighed. "I do miss plain old meat and potatoes."

  "I might be able to do something about that."

  He spun his chair at her. "For real?"

  "Depends on what that brown meat is in the fridge."

  Bliss tasted the cooked meat. It passed for cooked ground beef. No potatoes in the pantry ruled out stew or even mashed with gravy and meat topping. But she had fresh onions and cans of green beans and pork and beans. That gave her an idea, even if there were no butter beans.

  Ground up jerky could replace the bacon. A few more substitutions on the seasonings and liquids, and she was satisfied she'd put together a hearty American-style bean and beef casserole.

  Finding a bag of cornmeal, she added cornbread to the menu. Forty-five minutes later, she straightened from the narrow oven that barely fit the casserole dish, planted her hands on her hips, and sighed. She felt immensely better…until she stepped out of the kitchen and saw that bank of computers, their blank screens staring at her.

  Reality hit hard. Robbie was still missing. And somewhere in his files there had to be a clue.

  Leaving her dishes to bake, she took a seat in front of the computer she'd been working on and moved the mouse, bringing the unit out of sleep mode. She'd scanned every text file. Time to check out his photos.

  The cityscapes were interesting, colorful and full of people. But even they grew repetitious after an hour. If the problem lay among the myriad of faces in those pictures, she had no way of telling.

  She broke to remove the bread and casserole from the oven and watch the surveillance feeds so Asher could take a break. Then it was back to photos of tunnels and caves. The large, paved tunnels with cars driving through them all looked pretty much the same. The handful of passages narrow enough to accommodate only human traffic varied little. She was about to take another break when Jake's SKYPE account pinged again.

  She should ignore it like she had when it had sounded this morning. But what if his family needed to get a message to him? What if they were worried about him? This was the second call of the day, after all. That could mean trouble.

  Besides, she was curious what kind of family dynamic produced a SEAL.

  She moved to Jake's computer and reached for the mouse. She hesitated. She had no business snooping.

  Still, he'd checked her out. Turnabout was fair play.

  She tapped the minimized SKYPE icon. The face populating the screen was of a Twenty-something guy with longish, blond hair and eyes the same striking blue as Jake's. But these blue eyes sparkled with laughter above a mouth stretched into a broad grin.

  "If you're the reason my brother didn't stop by to visit me before sneaking back to his hidey hole, I guess I can forgive him this time," the face on the screen said.

  Bliss was slow to respond. She wasn't used to men referencing her as any sort of temptation. Nor had she thought much about the fact Jake had cut his vacation short to come back and look for Robbie.

  "I think it's the disappearance of my brother that made him cut his vacation short," she said. "Not me."

  "Uh huh," the guy whose hair was as pale as Jake's was dark said, his smile growing crooked. "I'm sure that your brother having such a pretty sister helped Jake decide to take
on your case."

  Pretty? It had been so long since she'd ventured into the dating world she couldn't remember when last any man had called her pretty. But she was more interested in this seemingly polar opposite personality related to Jake to linger on the compliment.

  "You must be Jake's brother," she said.

  "One of them," he said through his wide grin. "I'm Renn, the baby of the family. But don't hold that against me. I was born an old soul."

  Renn clearly got the sense of humor Jake didn't…and talkative gene.

  "So," Renn went on, "you're J.B. Cooper."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Our sister Dixie happened to be watching Sisi Sherwood when Jake made his appearance. She insisted he explain his presence on the talk show."

  "Jake pretending to be J.B. Cooper had to have raised a lot of questions among his family."

  "Actually, the real hubbub was about the family ghost showing up on TV. Jake prefers to fly below the radar."

  "Ghost?"

  "It's a reference to that secretive SEAL demeanor he wears like a crown of thorns."

  Bliss raised an eyebrow. "Crown of thorns?"

  Renn's smile softened. "Jake has issues about living in the civilized world."

  "And civilized to him means…"

  "It's his description of the world we mere mortals live in."

  She huffed. "Sounds like Jake."

  "Yeah, he doesn't think he's fit to live in our world."

  If Renn's words weren't telling enough, the sad note of his tone suggested Jake's choosing to live like a SEAL on a mission hinted that wasn't all he wanted to be.

  "Why would he think that?" she asked.

  The curl returned to Renn's lips. "That's something you need to ask Jake."

  "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to probe."

  Renn laughed, his eyes twinkling. "Pardon my French, ma'am, but the hell you didn't."

  Busted.

  She gave Renn a contrite grin. "Are you allowed to at least tell me about your family?"

  Unlike the closed-off Jake, Renn was an open book. He was so fun to talk to Bliss barely registered the tall shadow sliding over her. She glanced up at the man standing beyond camera range peering down on her through narrowed eyes. Her laughter caught in her throat even before Jake voiced an ominously low, "What the hell are you doing talking to my brother?"

  "Is that my ogre brother back from the front lines?" Renn asked, sounding not the least intimidated.

  Jake's expression remained hard.

  "Take it down a notch, Jake, before you scare Bliss," Renn added.

  "He doesn't scare me," she said, holding Jake's gaze.

  Jake's eyes narrowed, but not before she'd caught a hint of confusion in them. Now knowing the warm family he'd grown up in, she wondered if there was some conflict between SEAL and man. It made her want to reach out and remind him he was a man first and a SEAL second. But he motioned her out of his chair and took the seat, cutting short the moment.

  She moved around the table toward the computer she'd been working on as Jake responded to his brother. "What did you tell her?"

  "As the first family member to meet your lady—"

  "She's not my lady."

  The force of Jake's retort prompted Bliss to recall another well-known writer's line. Me thinks the lady doth protest too much. Though, in this case, it was a man.

  She smiled as she eased into the seat in front of the computer containing Robbie's files, her ear craned toward Jake's and Renn's conversation.

  Renn laughed. "You're interested in her, or you wouldn't be so hot under the collar about me talking to her."

  She heard scrabbling noises and peeked under her screen to see Jake had knocked his headset off the table. "How would you know what I'm hot under the collar about?"

  "Dixie tells me you groused about that blasted romance writer the whole time you were at the farm. She said it's the closest she's ever seen you wear your heart on your sleeve."

  "Dixie knows nothing," he grumbled, righting himself with headset in hand and plugging it in, ending any further chance of Bliss eavesdropping on what Renn had to say about Jake's reactions to her.

  Bliss sat back in her seat and pondered what she had overheard. She'd been dismissing Jake's curtness as military demeanor or that he was mad she'd forced him into letting her come to Mexico with him. Could his brusqueness actually be about fighting an attraction to her instead?

  She wished.

  He was hot. She was not.

  Besides, did she even want to get involved with a sullen, emotionally closed-off man? And why was she even thinking about Jake when her brother was still MIA?

  Because she was curious about the man who used his vacation time to visit family, a vacation he'd cut short to help her find her missing brother.

  Longing pinched at her stomach, the image of a photo Renn had held up to the camera burned into her memory. Their sister Dixie with her St. John blue eyes gleaming while holding a bubbly toddler with pink ribbons in her blond hair and her beaming, darker haired husband Sam beside her with his arm slung around a grinning boy who had neither Dixie's nor Sam's eyes. The sun shone down on them, creating an almost halo effect in the field of wheat surrounding them. The ideal family.

  Bliss' chest tightened. She'd given up the dream of having what she saw in that picture when she hit thirty. Or had she put the dream on hold when Robbie had told her he wasn't coming back from Mexico and to watch her back? Oh yeah. Like she'd admitted to Jake, she'd feared something was wrong even then.

  Is that why she'd put her life on hold? So she could focus on keeping tabs on him?

  Was that why she'd too often had the feeling of being watched?

  "You talk too much," Jake growled at the screen around the corner.

  He signed off with his brother, his chair banging against the wall as he rose. He came around the table like a charging bull. Twisting her chair away from the console, he grabbed the armrests trapping her in place, and leaned over her. Close. His face in hers.

  "What the hell were you doing answering my private messages?"

  Shaken by facing her own life choice doubts, she sputtered, "I thought it might be important."

  "When someone contacts me on my private line, it's always important."

  "Then shouldn't someone take the message?" she countered, regaining her composure.

  "A client should not be answering my private messages."

  "I'm not a client," she leveled. "I'm the sister of your missing computer guru here to help you. If I hadn't been here, you'd never have broken the code for his Dropbox account."

  His muscles flexed. Her chair bumped back against the table edge. Deep in his eyes beyond the anger pulsed an unease. But unease about what? That she spoke the truth?

  Or because her presence had him questioning something in his life?

  Reminded there was a man behind all the SEAL armor, she shifted gears—used a piece of family history she'd learned from Renn—used Renn's teasing example to diffuse Jake's anger.

  "So, action movie star Dane St. John is your brother. Or is that another of your SEAL secrets?"

  Bliss' question hit Jake like a right hook and, though he'd been trained not to react emotionally to most anything, he shot back, "No. But I prefer to keep my family separate from my work."

  Then he pivoted away from her and headed for the kitchen. Just the mention of the golden boy's name tore at his scab of envy.

  Jake snatched a bowl from the cupboard. Everything had always fallen into Dane's lap.

  He peered into the casserole dish on top of the stove. Hell, there was barely enough left for him. If he were Dane, there'd have been a mountain of food in that pot.

  Jake winced, shamed by his thoughts. His middle brother may have been born under a lucky star, but even Dane had almost lost the most precious things in his life, his wife and daughter.

  Jake shook his head. Where his life had ended up wasn't Dane's fault. He'd made his own choices. Fact was,
he envied all his siblings their ability to find love—their worthiness of being loved.

  Scraping the remains of the casserole into his bowl, he noticed the distinctive lack of hot pepper aroma rising from the meat and bean concoction. He gave the bowl a sniff. Not a single singed nose hair. At last, something he could be grateful for today.

  Piling on three squares of cornbread, he headed for the dining room. The moans emanating from the big table sounded more like an orgy than a bunch of men eating.

  "Man, this is good," Fitch said.

  Dozer rose from the table announcing, "I'm getting myself a second helping."

  "Too late," Jake said. "I got the last of it."

  "Oh man," Dozer groused, plunking back down and scraping his bowl.

  Jake dug into the casserole that promised to taste as good as it smelled. It didn't disappoint. It tasted like home.

  "Who was tonight's cook?" Jake asked. "And why hasn't he been cooking all our meals?"

  "Because he's a she," Ash called across the room, his feet propped on the console of security screens, a nearly empty bowl cradled in his lap. "And she just arrived last night."

  Bliss. Of course. Helping again. He should've known.

  Jake finished his meal in silence, each man calling thanks and compliments to Bliss on their way to the kitchen with their empty bowls. He left the table without a word to her. Renn was right about his being attracted to the woman, and the last thing he needed to do was encourage her in any way.

  Ash gave him a sidelong look when he dumped his dish into the soapy water Ash was filling the sink with. "The least you could do is tell her the meal was good."

  "Shouldn't you be monitoring the security feeds?" Jake grumbled.

  "Even gimpy SEALs get breaks now and then. Back to Bliss."

  Jake scowled and turned away from his longtime friend, intent on escaping to his private quarters. "She got enough compliments on her food from everyone else."

  "Why are you being so hard on her?" Ash asked, stopping him in his tracks.