She could do this. She knew she was capable. Hell, she’d moved across the country, left her family behind to start a new life for herself. She could handle this. Yep, she would be someone that Drake could rely on.
And on that note, Karen closed her eyes, and prayed she would sleep for a while.
DRAKE PUT HIS SON IN his bassinette, and tucked an afghan around his sleeping wife. He’d stopped mentally correcting himself months ago. Karen was his wife, and would have been six months ago if she hadn’t had this idiotic idea about having a Christmas wedding after their baby was born. He took one last look at his little family before leaving the room.
As he walked by Piper’s room, he heard Wilma on the phone with someone. As much as he loved having his soon-to-be mother-in-law here to help Karen, he missed his baby sister. He pulled out his cell phone and called the real estate agent. He got her voice mail.
“Avery, here. Roberta, can you get back to me about the townhome I told you about this morning? I want to know if we can see it and put a bid on it before it goes on the market.”
Clint Archer, the team’s computer tech, had been keeping an eye out for townhomes in and around his complex. He’d called to tell him one was going on the market tomorrow, and he needed to act fast. Drake suspected that Clint had somehow delayed the listing from appearing online, so Drake could get a jump on it, but when he pushed his friend, Clint denied it. Drake wasn’t buying it.
After he hung up he scrolled through the texts that had come in while he’d held Karen. Shit, one of the texts was from Mason and it was marked urgent. He should have checked them before calling Roberta.
“Can you come to base?” Mason asked before Drake even had a chance to say a word.
Drake knew it was important, or his lieutenant wouldn’t be asking. “I’m leaving in less than five.”
“Preciate it.” The phone went dead.
Drake went down the hall and knocked on the halfway open bedroom door where Wilma was sitting on the bed and staring out the window.
“You okay?” they asked simultaneously.
Drake answered first. “I have to head to the base. Do you have things covered? Andrew and Karen are sleeping.”
Wilma gave a perky smile. “You go on. What would you like for dinner?”
Something was wrong. Wilma was always upbeat, but there was something off with ‘perky’. He didn’t have time to probe. He’d get to the bottom of it when he got home.
“Anything you cook will be great. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
He left the apartment, got in his truck and headed for the base at Coronado.
“CLOSE THE DOOR,” MASON said as Drake walked into his office. Mason looked tense. Suddenly, Drake felt like he did when he had been put before a judge to decide to either go into the Navy or serve time. What the hell was going on? Mason looked up from the file on his desk.
“Jesus, Drake, this isn’t about you. I’m sorry, Man, I’m handling this all wrong.”
Drake relaxed. “This has to be a personnel issue, or you wouldn’t be so twisted. It’s got to be one of us.”
“It’s Finn.”
Fuck. Finn Crandall had struggled with PTSD last year. He’d gone undercover on a human trafficking ring with young women. In order to save the girls, he had to make tough choices, and it literally tore him open and left his psyche bloody. Drake had seen the flashbacks he’d had, they were debilitating.
Finn had taken a desk job, knowing he couldn’t go out on missions, but every team member of Midnight Delta wanted him back in the field with them.
Drake looked at the file on Mason’s desk and he suddenly wanted to be anywhere but there.
“Is that Finn’s eval from sniper school?”
“Only Crandall would go from full-blown PTSD, and then enter three months of the most grueling and psychologically stressful training the SEAL teams have to offer. Shit, I tried to talk him out of it. He just gave me that stare of his. I shut my mouth after five sentences.”
“Don’t leave me in suspense, did he wash out?”
Mason snorted, and flipped open the file. “He was first in his class.”
“So why the fuck do you have your panties in a twist? That’s awesome.” Drake grinned.
Mason scowled, and threw his pen down on the file. “I’ll tell you why. Gates, over at the Sniper school is planning on recruiting Finn to be one of the instructors.”
Drake whistled. “That’s big. That’s really big. That’s fucking huge.”
“Thanks for stating the obvious.”
Drake’s mind raced. Finn was one of those guys who loved mentoring people, but...
“He’s a sneaky bastard. His ability to find a needle in a haystack in the middle of the goddamn jungle or desert has saved our asses on at least six missions that I can count. I mean, we would have been fucked without him. He knows it. Clint tries, but Finn can make things appear out of thin air. He gets a woody doing that stuff. I don’t think being an instructor will be as much of a draw.”
“It will be if he still has any worries about being detrimental to the team.” Mason rubbed the back of his neck, a sure sign he was stressed.
“How the hell can he think he would be a detriment? He just went through the toughest training SEALs have. If he came out first in his class, he has to be at the top of his intellectual and psychological game.”
“I get it. You get it. Gates gets it. Hell, the shrink gets it. But if there is one single doubt in Finn’s head he’ll take the instructor job.”
“I would have been more worried about Declan and the Shadow Alliance. You know Dec has been trying to recruit him ever since Finn went on desk duty, don’t you?” Drake said.
Mason’s eyes went cold. “Yeah, I know it. I called the bastard.”
“Finn told you?” Drake was surprised.
“Hell no, he didn’t tell me. But I knew Declan would be calling him. I know how that devious fuckers mind works. I told him that Finn was mine and that I’d rip his throat out if he tried to recruit one of my men.”
Drake chuckled. He would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation. “You stopped Declan from taking him, now you want us to double team Finn so he doesn’t take Gates up on his offer. Do I have it right?”
“That about sums it up.”
“Call him in. If he even thinks about taking the instructor job, I’ll beat the shit out of him.”
“You might have thirty pounds on him, but he fights dirty. I’d say it’d be even.”
“Fine.” Drake agreed with Mason’s assessment. “I don’t have much time though.”
Mason raised his eyebrow in question.
“I’ve got to get back home. I’m waiting on a call back from a realtor.” Plus, he was already antsy to get back to Andrew and Karen.
“You’re not letting the grass grow under your feet.” Mason smiled.
“Clint found it before it went on the market. If I can get in there before a bidding war starts it should be mine. I want to get them to sign papers today.”
“That’s kind of impulsive isn’t it?”
“No, it’s in Clint and Lydia’s complex. Basically, has the same floorplan only with four bedrooms. Karen loves their place, so it should be a no brainer.”
“Well, good luck.”
“Call Finn in. Let’s get this over with.” Drake cracked his knuckles.
Mason pulled out his cell and texted Finn. They waited ten minutes, shooting the shit about Black Dawn’s last mission. Finn knocked on the door. He came in sweaty from working out.
“Drake.” He grinned enthusiastically. “What pulled you away from Karen and Andrew Mason?”
Drake loved the way his team always used Andrew’s middle name. They got a kick out of him naming his son after their lieutenant.
“Something important,” Mason said. “I’d ask you to have a seat...”
“I’d decline. I wouldn’t want to be the next guy sitting in the chair,” Finn agreed.
“It didn’t seem important.”
“It sure did to Captain Gates,” Mason said with a casual smile. “He hand-delivered your file this morning.”
Finn’s demeanor changed, became cautious. “He did?”
“Yep. Wanna know why?”
“Yeah.” Finn glanced between Mason and Drake, knowing something was up.
“You made a hell of an impression on him. He wants to recruit you.”
Finn didn’t say anything. Drake watched him carefully. This was classic Finn Crandall. He was going silent, forcing others to spill their guts. But Mason was Mason, and he out silenced him.
“Do you want me to take it?” Finn finally asked.
“God, you’re a dumbshit,” Drake ground out. “How could you even ask that question?”
“I’m talking to Mase.” Finn stared at their commander.
“Finn, this isn’t about what I want, this is about what you want,” Mason said quietly.
“God, are you a dumbshit, Mason?” Drake roared. “You just got done telling me that you’d do anything to keep Finn on our team. Jesus Christ, you both sound like junior high school girls wanting to know if a boy likes her or not. Fine, I’ll be the middle man. You like each other! Finn, Mason wants you on the team. We all fucking want you on the team. And Mason, Finn wants to be on the team. Do I need to knock your heads together? Because I will.”
“This has to be Finn’s decision,” Mason said stubbornly.
“You are such a girl.”
“Do you believe I can hack it?” Finn asked. “I need you to be honest.”
“You’re a girl too,” Drake said with disgust.
“Shut it,” Mason clipped out, he turned to Finn. “And you. Do you honestly think I would do anything that would endanger my team? Ever? For that matter, do you think I would do anything that would put you in harm’s way? I thought you were good before you did sniper school. Now I’m thinking of making you second-in-command, since Drake keeps calling us girls.”
For the first time since entering the office there was a hint of a smile on Finn’s face.
“I want in on the action. I appreciate Gate’s offer but that isn’t what I want to do. Maybe when I’m too old for the field.” Finn let his voice trail off.
“It’s settled then. You’re dating.” Drake got up and clapped Finn on the back and winked at Mason. “I’m out of here.”
Drake left the office, shaking hands with some of the guys on other teams that he hadn’t seen since Andrew had been born. His phone rang when he got to his truck. It was Roberta.
“Drake, can you be over there in two hours for a viewing?” she asked.
He looked at his watch. It was going to be tight, but he said yes.
“Are you putting together the offer papers?” he asked.
“Already done.” She chuckled.
“You’re the best.”
“Bring Andrew.”
“Huh?” What was she talking about? Drake wondered as he started his truck.
“They’ll sign on the dotted line when they see a young family looking to buy their home. Trust me. There’ll be no negotiations, they’ll just sign. Bring Andrew.”
“Okay. You’re the boss.”
“HONEY, I’M HOME,” DRAKE called out as he twirled his keys. He smelled something good coming from the kitchen. God, Wilma could cook, now he understood where Karen had gotten her mad skills with spices.
“Shhhh, Karen’s still sleeping,” Wilma said coming out of the kitchen.
“Dammit.”
“What’s wrong, Drake?”
“We need to leave. In a little over an hour we need to be at a townhome to look it over and sign papers to buy it.”
Wilma stared at him in shock. “You’re not serious.”
“As a heart attack.”
“I don’t know whether to be happy for you, or to say you’re crazy.”
“Be happy for us. We’ve been trying to get into this complex since Karen sold her house in Tennessee. She’s going to be thrilled.”
“Well I’ll go put the food away and have it ready to warm up for later. This will give me some alone time with Andrew.”
“Actually, Wilma, I was hoping you could go with us. Our realtor said that having Andrew along would help the sellers sell to us before they put the house on the market. We’re kind of using him as baby bait.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Not if it gets him a room of his own. Thanks for cooking dinner,” Drake said as he headed down the hall. When he got to the master bedroom he saw that Karen was awake and had Andrew cuddled next to her on the bed.
“You’re loud,” she said.
“You heard?”
“We have a chance at a townhome?”
“If we can make it over there in time. You up for a day out?”
“Try and stop me. However, I don’t like the term baby bait.”
Drake reddened. He had regretted it the moment it had come out of his mouth.
“Roger that.”
“YOU DID GOOD DRAKE.” Karen was vaguely aware of her mother saying from the backseat of the crew cab truck.
“It was Karen’s idea to buy into that complex.”
Yay me, Karen thought drowsily as the freeway blew by.
“Then you both did a good job. Piper and Andrew will have their own rooms, and you and Karen can share an office if you want.”
Karen smiled as Drake let out a laugh. “She and I are going to be fighting as to whether that is an office or a weight room. She, of course, wants weights.”
Karen snorted, then fell asleep. The next thing she knew her door was being opened.
“You carry Andrew, and I’ll carry this bundle.” She heard Drake say.
“Can walk,” Karen said batting away Drake’s hands as he unbuckled her seatbelt. He kissed her, and all thought of protesting faded away. His kiss was soft, sweet, and hot. Before she knew it, she was awake. All of her was awake.
“There she is,” he whispered.
He lifted her out of the truck and pushed closed the door with his shoulder.
“I can walk,” she breathed into his ear.
“I’ve liked carrying you from the very first. Remember?” She did. It had been snowing that day in Tennessee. She’d been mesmerized by Piper’s big brother from the very first. She settled into his arms and luxuriated in Drake’s strength and protection. Soon she was in their room, the heat was on, Drake was helping her out of her clothes.
“Honey, I can undress myself,” she gave a sleepy protest. “I’m not an invalid.”
“This isn’t about you being an invalid. This is about me taking care of you. I used to do this even before you were pregnant. It was like I got to unwrap my own secret present.”
Karen melted at his words. She was so lucky. But darn it, she was so tired too.
“Andrew needs to be fed,” she said sleepily.
“Your mom’s taking him for the night. She’s using the stored breast milk.”
“S’okay.” She smiled as his lips touched hers. So tender. So Drake.
THE TROPICAL BREEZE drifted through the gauzy curtains, soothing and arousing her body as she looked at the man she loved. She could hear the ocean from their hotel room. Karen traced the line of Drake’s broad shoulders with her eyes, all of those muscles that carried her with ease, that drove her crazy with need.
Her hands clenched into fists, then released and she slowly stroked her hands over the sleek skin of his back.
“Baby, you’re playing with fire.” His voice sounded like Tennessee whiskey poured over gravel and it feathered another layer of fantasy onto her already heightened senses. Karen continued rubbing her palms up and down Drake’s warm flesh. She loved watching how he moved into her touch. She placed a kiss on the middle of his back. How could she resi
st? She breathed him in.
“Now you’ve done it.” He rolled over in bed and midnight eyes captured hers, they were so hot she thought she would melt. She smiled and raked her nails through the hair on his chest, loving how he shuddered. Drake took her left hand and brought it to his mouth and kissed her palm, she felt it all the way to her knees.
“Drake, I need.”
“I know what you need, Sweetheart.” He brought took her hands and put them to her sides, and teased the straps of her nightie down her arms. The gown balked in its descent over her full breasts. Drake’s eyes glittered as he stared. “God, you’re gorgeous.” He made her feel beautiful. How did he do that, when she was so much fuller than she had been? The man was amazing.
He pushed the material over the tips of her breasts, and the rasp caused her to gasp. She was so sensitive now. His fingers skimmed over the delicate tracery of veins, so good, so damn good. Then he licked from her areola on up, raining kisses along her collarbone until he bit her earlobe and she muffled a cry.
Karen struggled to get her arms loose of her gown, and when she did, she threaded her fingers through his hair and tugged so that she got exactly what she needed, his mouth on hers. How could every kiss get better? Hot, wet, and lush, Karen’s head spun as she spiraled into need. She pressed herself so close that she hurt.
“Slow down, Love. We have time.”
Her Treasured SEAL Page 4