He stepped away.
“I’m sorry, Brandy. This isn’t right. I brought you here so you could get a good night’s sleep, to help you rest.” He chanced stepping back to her until he could feel the heat of her body again. “Let’s just keep things simple and do that, okay? Let’s forget about all this crap. I’m beat, and I’ll bet you are, too. Can we call a truce and just sleep? I’ll even keep my clothes on if you like.”
He could feel her soften as she bridged the gap between them, all those lovely curves fitting so nicely, making him come alive. She placed her palms on his chest.
“It was my fault, Tucker. But I think you have a good idea there. Why don’t we just go to bed?”
“You’re on. No objections here,” he lied. He tried to keep his grin from looking too lecherous. He took her hand and gently pulled her to the bedroom. He pretended he didn’t notice the posters of well-oiled ladies on motorcycles, stark naked, or how she was staring at them with interest. She approached the poster with the row of ten perfect asses. He heard her inhale and hoped she wasn’t going to object. If she did, he was going to rip all of them off the wall and toss everything from his balcony to the pool level below.
But what she did next surprised him. She removed her clothes, giving him one of those looks that made him nervous. It was the thing that scared him most about women. He had no way of knowing what was really going on inside her mind. While she stood in her bra and panties, she undid the center clasp and allowed the magnificence of her breasts to shine in the moonlight, beckoning to him. He was holding his breath, mesmerized.
“I like your idea. Let’s just sleep.” She pulled back the sheets and slid her naked body under them, invading his man bed, defiling his private sanctuary that would forever after smell like her and bring back memories of what it was like to have her there lying next to him.
He hurried to discard his pants and shirt and then his red, white and blue boxers, turning to sit on the edge so she wouldn’t see the enormous hard-on he had for her. She snuggled close, wrapping her arms around his upper torso and squeezing her lovely upper chest against him. She moved her head just enough so her lips touched his ear when she said, “And then maybe tomorrow morning you can fuck my brains out.”
Tucker knew he was hopelessly flawed. But he also knew he was utterly hooked on this woman. And he’d only known her for less than twenty-four hours. This had never happened to him before. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be taking her to dress fittings and window shopping jewelry shops.
It would be the end of his life as he knew it.
And he’d love every minute of it.
Chapter 8
As the days and weeks flew by, Brandy’s father recovered with only a slight amount of memory loss. He still had headaches that drove him to bed from time to time. He was able to identify his attacker as Jorge, his former employee. Although both the Sheriff and the San Diego PD searched, when they couldn’t find him and he stopped reporting for meetings he was required to attend, it was assumed he had fled to Mexico. With his prior record, when he was apprehended, he’d be going away for a long time, since the assault caused injury that necessitated a hospital stay, and drew blood.
Brandy and Tucker spent time with Dorie and Brawley when they returned from their honeymoon in Hawaii. She also worked longer hours at the grocery, and assisted her father in hiring two more experienced clerks. She hired a professional organizer to work with her dad to get the office looking more like an office than a storage unit.
But Brandy knew she’d have to get another good job like she had with the ad agency. The rents in San Diego weren’t cheap, and with Tucker staying over at her cottage so much of the time, she wanted to get someplace more private and not under her father’s watchful eye. But she was in no hurry. She allowed her relationship with Tucker to take it’s own path. The longer she was around him, the less of a difference their fifteen-year age spread made.
But today was going to be an important test of their relationship. Tucker had worked on her non-stop until she finally relented. She was going to allow him to take her tandem skydiving. Although she’d visited the glider port and watched him jump and land safely a dozen times, it did nothing to remove her fear.
“You just have to ignore it. Just like you did when you learned to ride your first bike,” he’d told her.
“But I wasn’t going to fall thirteen thousand feet if I had a mishap on the bike.” She couldn’t imagine she would enjoy falling through the sky, even with Tucker securely strapped to her back.
“Trust me, it doesn’t feel like you’re falling. It feels like there’s a blast of wind coming straight from the earth, holding you up so you can fly. It really does feel that way, Brandy. You’ll see.”
The old converted bomber with the door removed loaded everyone and their buddies up after some ground instruction. Brandy and Tucker were to be in the middle of the jump, since it was her first one. Several SEALs and former Teammates of Tucker’s jumped solo, doing cartwheels and in-air formations. At last it was their turn. She stood at the edge of the door, barely able to see cars moving below. Houses looked no bigger than her pinkie fingernail. The air that blew back through the jump door was freezing cold.
She wasn’t sure when she was supposed to jump, and worried she’d catch her foot or shoelace on the flange at the opening.
“When do we—” she began to shout, until she felt Tucker’s weight behind her and effortlessly they were out of the plane and freefalling. As her heart rate began to return to normal, she realized he was right. It didn’t feel like she was falling at all. It felt like the earth was slowly moving to reach out and touch her, but very, very slowly. He tapped her arms, signaling her to make a human “W” as she extended them out to the sides and spread her feet.
He kissed the top of her head and shouted, “Close your mouth. I’m getting slimed.”
Her wonderment and awe had caused her to forget that little part of the training. “Sorry,” she shouted back at the top of her lungs.
Tucker handed her the cord to the chute and together they pulled it, which yanked her straight up several hundred feet, or so it seemed. As the glider extended, Tucker steered them around in circles, even driving them through wispy clouds, soaring up and then doing high-banked turns in mid air. As she came closer and closer to the earth, the air began to warm.
He pointed out the border. “That’s Mexico right over there.” He also pointed out several other landmarks. The San Diego Bay appeared like it was a shallow bowl of silver pebbles as it glistened in the morning sun. She took his hand and kissed his palm.
“Thank you,” she said to him in the quiet. It felt like the ride went on for an hour, that they would be suspended all day, but finally the ground began to loom large. She threw her legs out in front of her as they landed on Tucker’s, collapsed and rolled together in the long grass, entangled in the chute.
Looking up to the sky, it appeared twice as big as before, and twice as blue. A gentle breeze rearranged her hair when her cap fell to the side. Tucker’s face and beard was pressed to her cheek. “I knew you could do it,” he whispered. But even that whisper had the deep raspy tones that made her whole body vibrate.
“Amazing,” was all she could think to say in return, as she continued searching the blue spans above her. “It wasn’t anything at all what I imagined.”
“It’s like a lot of things. Scarier to think about than to do. We do thousands of these jumps on the Teams. Twice as high. At midnight when you only have your night vision specs on. You see oceans of glittering lights and hope that they’re harmless animals, not the eyeballs of the enemy.”
“I could never do that,” she answered. “But I can see you doing it. Must have been fun.”
Tucker hesitated before he said anything at all, and then she couldn’t make out the words. She left him to his private thoughts. She knew he missed the life, and would ask him sometime how he replaced the adrenaline he used to have coursing through his veins. She
wondered if being a farmer, or a father or husband would ever be really enough.
“Come on, we gotta get up before we get overrun with the newbies.” He pulled her up by the straps, unhooked her from him and from the chute and began gathering the colorful fabric, shaking out the blades of grass and small rocks. She noted how happy he looked, with the sun shining behind him, greying hair blowing in the breeze.
She touched his cheek, making him stop, his hand wrapped around her wrist.
“I mean it. Thank you, Tucker.” She stood on tiptoes and kissed him until he swept her up and carried her off the field, the lightweight nylon chute tucked under his arm.
Afterwards, they went for a seafood lunch down by the marina. She scanned the million dollar vessels and the people out walking their dogs or jogging on this sunny Sunday. Every day was sunny here.
“See, you wouldn’t have this in Oregon,” she chided him.
“That’s very true. This suits me.”
“Me too.”
Over their soup he asked her, “Where do you want to go for Valentine’s Day?”
That sent a zinger up the back of her legs. She recovered quickly, but couldn’t make a decision. “Anywhere. You just name it.”
“How about we go up north? Several of the guys and some of the wives are doing a road trip to Sonoma. Can you get a couple of extra days off? It takes a day up and a day down. Gotta stay and do some wine tasting. And I understand you’re proficient at grape stomping.”
“In February? You know anyone who has grapes this time of year?” She wrinkled up her nose and then winked at him.
“I love that picture with you and Dorie.”
“Ah, the good old days, when I thought I had a job.” She allowed her voice to wander off.
“You want me to move in? I could help with the rent.”
Brandy’s pulse quickened as her stomach turned. “I was thinking I’d move someplace else.” She drank her water and didn’t look at him for a couple long seconds, not sure she understood how he’d take it. “And no, your apartment is completely out of the question.”
“Why would you ever want to move? Your place is perfect.”
“And it’s right behind my father’s house.”
“So? You don’t think he understands what we do all night long, Brandy? Come on. He knows his little girl is all grown up, with grown up appetites. Besides, I think he’d be relieved you had someone to watch over you when he wasn’t there to protect you himself. Give him a break. Let him relax. I’ll do the heavy lifting for awhile.”
The “for awhile” stuck in her chest. But, she had it coming. The conversation had come to the edge of their limit on what was safe to discuss. They never talked about long-term futures. It was way too soon.
“I think dad likes having me around, but it’s hard to make ends meet with what he pays me. It’s like my life’s on hold each week I stay there.”
Tucker was quiet, and then he spoke down to the tabletop. “Why not look at it like you don’t have to decide right now. If you stay there you’ll probably make him happy. He gets to see more of you than most fathers get. You’re not pressured to go knock yourself out trying to swim upstream with all the other people clamoring for a fat paycheck.”
She knew there was more he wanted to say, but was finding the choice of words difficult. She reached out and took one of his hands. “And I’m hoping you wouldn’t mind, right?”
His brown eyes saw everything about her. He saw her insides, how her heart was beating, saw all her uncertainty. Saw how grateful she was that they’d met.
“That would be an understatement.” His thumb caressed her knuckles and she thought she saw traces of a blush. “Can I ask you a question?” he asked.
“Shoot.” She inhaled deeply and braced for something momentous.
“If we did decide to move in together, could I keep just one of my posters?”
Chapter 9
Tucker had scheduled a fishing trip to Baja for early March, but that wasn’t going to change his plans to take the road trip to Sonoma County. As they were preparing, he received an enormous rent increase, so Brandy presented him with a key to her cottage.
“You sure?” He was thrilled, but surprised.
“Nope. But I think it’s time and I did ask Dad. You were right, he said he was relieved.”
“Just human nature.”
“So have you decided which poster will come with you?” He loved the way she teased him.
“I’m leaving them all behind. Why have an imitation when I’ve got the real thing?”
He’d been doing extra workouts with several new boys graduating in June, looking to enlist after the summer. His back and knees were bothering him somewhat, so he decided he’d take his time moving his stuff, do it gradually so he didn’t send himself over the edge. For the first time in his life, he was feeling his age. He could still bulk up, and work all the machines at Gunny’s even better than when he was on the Teams, but his agility and speed was lacking. He was stiff in the mornings and sometimes woke up with leg cramps.
But when Team 3 got orders to do a temporary deployment back to Baja, everything changed. The Team Guys were to work on the sex trafficking ring they had slowed, but now had flared up again. The fishing trip was still on, but Tucker was going as the real civilian, and it would be no picnic for the active duty SEALs. He’d gotten special permission after initially having his participation rejected. He was excited to be of service, even if it was logistics support, to the men he’d previously served with.
Brandy wasn’t pleased.
“I think the Navy is using you as bait, Tucker. I mean, you have to pay for your part of the trip, but you don’t really get to do whatever you want to. You have to hang with them. They should at least pay for your way down and back and the cost of the rental when you’re there.”
“I’m actually happy about spending more time with them than I would if it was a real vacation. We usually can only get two or three days, like our Sonoma trip.”
But she didn’t understand Tucker would have paid anything he could afford just to be embedded deeper within the community. He knew it was a hard thing to explain, so he didn’t try.
He was nearly settled with the move, just ahead of their road trip. He had so little furniture, only the closet revealed the secret of his residency. Brandy got rid of her bed. He got rid of the old couch. Everything else he left behind for a young recruit who was beginning his first workup in BUD/S—someone who also appreciated his stash of magazines and posters.
He offered to rototill the back lot for Mr. Cook as a thank you for letting him share the cottage with Brandy. He even offered to pay a little more in rent, but Cook wouldn’t have any of that.
Tucker fixed the clutch wires on the “mangler”, as he called the tiller, switched out the gasoline after installing a new gas tank and filter. The machine purred like a kitten. Afterwards, the sandy light brown soil looked like chocolate sugar. He imagined Cook would have a field day while they were gone, planting all his early spring seeds.
At last, they took off for Northern California, driving in one long caravan of ten vehicles. Their destination was Frog Haven Vineyards, where several of the SEALs had invested some of their re-up bonuses. Brawley told him it was run by the infamous Pirate, who had also been a member of Kyle’s squad. Tucker had never met the man.
But he’d also been on earlier road trips when he was active and knew all about Nick Dunn’s winery in Santa Rosa, which was on the way. His sister had left the property to Nick. He and Devon converted the nearly bankrupt nursery site into a world-class wedding center, lavender farm and winery. Tucker had been part of several work parties in past years, but had never seen the final result, and knew Brandy would love it.
After only two stops along the way and nearly ten hours later, they arrived in Sonoma County, not stopping until they got all the way up to Healdsburg and the famous Dry Creek Valley. Traveling the winding country two-lane freeway through the valley f
loor, they found it covered in blooming bright yellow mustard flowers between rows of blackened and gnarled old grapevines. Vineyard workers were cutting back last year’s growth to make way for trellising new ones. The air was lightly scented by the smoldering piles of clippings and farm debris all along the way.
“I can’t believe I’ve missed this area,” Brandy remarked. “Never thought I’d find anything prettier than Coronado, but this comes pretty close.”
“People come here from all over the world just to drive around, eat incredible food and taste great wines. Barrel tasting is really big in the early fall.”
“Sounds like Heaven,” she answered back.
“These guys have it good. Zak’s nickname is the pirate. He got injured on his first deployment, shot in the eye and is real lucky to be alive.”
“I’d say. But except for the eye, he was okay?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Were you close?”
“He came on board after I’d gone, so I never got to meet him. But after the injury, he wanted to come back. He worked like a dog and qualified Expert with his other eye, and went through most of the BUD/S training again. You don’t find many guys who could do that.”
“So he went back?”
“Well, Kyle wanted him back, I was told, but in the end, the Navy thought better of it and asked him to scratch. He met a local Realtor and they found this property and bought it, along with a whole bunch of Team Guys and their relatives. Now they’re making beer, along with the wine. I hear it’s real tasty.”
“Zak sounds like one tough dude.”
The caravan slowed down, the first car turning up a crushed granite drive, quickly disappearing from view. As Tucker began his approach up the driveway, he drove past a handful of mailboxes, and pointed out the winery sign.
“Frog Haven. That’s it. Got the Bone Frog logo and everything, not that the average tourist would know. You won’t see a Trident anywhere.”
They drove past more vineyard workers doing pruning and cleanup. A herd of small goats was grazing between several rows, hedged in by portable fencing.
New Years SEAL Dream: A Bone Frog Brotherhood Novella Page 6