by Tawny Weber
Jaw clenched, his eyes shifted back to where Tessa was stretching. Her moves were sinuous and smooth, so enticing that even his anxiety over his career couldn’t stop him from getting hard. That was the thing about Tessa. She was so comfortable in her sexuality that she seduced without trying.
He’d told her that sometimes life didn’t offer choices, just fallout. It looked as if he was about to get his. His gut churned but he cleared his head. Worries and fear were deadly in battle and in life.
“Am I in?” he finally asked, needing to know if he’d completely blown it.
“You’re solid,” Irish assured him.
Gabriel let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. But there was something in Irish’s tone, an edge that kept him from relaxing completely.
“And?” he persisted. If he were in, asking wasn’t against protocol. But the fact that he had to ask rather than Irish readily volunteering the information warned him that there were problems.
“And so am I. We leave in five days.” Without another word, without even looking at Gabriel, Irish walked away. Not toward the women, but back inside the hotel.
Irish was supposed to get married in seven days.
Gabriel closed his eyes with a silent groan.
Son of a bitch.
He should have stuck to his guns, followed his rule. He should have stuck with his plan to deal with Jeglinski. It’d seemed like the right thing to do at the time, but look what breaking his rules got him.
He didn’t mind taking his knocks when life changed. He owned his own actions. But someone else paying for what he’d done? That went against everything he believed, everything he was.
A movement on the beach caught his eye as Tessa took a bag of towels and mats from Livi. Even from a distance he could see her chiding her friend for doing too much. He thought back to all of the stories she’d told him, all of the stress she’d gone through over this wedding.
All to make sure her best friend was happy.
That was what she did.
And him?
He ignored his own rules and let people down.
* * *
TESSA FELT LIKE the goddess of great sex had sprinkled her with happy dust. Fresh from her shower, revved from her workout, she’d dressed with one thing in mind. Seducing Gabriel again after dinner.
She felt great as she stepped into the hotel lobby.
She gave a little hum when she saw the crowd of cute Navy guys gathered by the check-in desk. Looked as though wedding week was about to get a whole lot more interesting. Of course, she already had her cute Navy guy, so she was already set.
Wouldn’t that be a great article?
How, like most things in life, it all came down to the fact that great sex made everything better.
Her smile widened as she sashayed toward the restaurant.
“Tessa, where the hell have you been?”
Her smile stiffened.
Okay, almost everything.
“Hey, Pauline,” she greeted, determined to keep a friendly face on for Livi’s sake. “I thought the festivities were through for the day. Did I miss an update?”
It was definitely possible, given that she’d set her phone to ignore all notifications of the other woman’s emails, texts or messages. Livi would let her know if she wanted something.
“If you’d check your phone you’d know I’ve been sending SOS messages for the past hour,” Pauline said, her face creased tight.
Tessa tensed. Given the older woman’s latest cosmetic “touch-up,” it took a lot of worry to move that skin.
“What’s the matter?”
Pauline shot a quick look around the lobby, then grabbed Tessa’s arm to pull her toward the front entrance. Despite being a good half foot shorter, Tessa managed to hold her own with the other woman’s long strides. But as soon as they reached the relative privacy of the side garden, she pulled away.
“What’s going on?” Her voice iced with fear, Tessa crossed her arms over her chest. “Is Livi okay?”
“Okay? How could she be okay? After everything I’ve done, all the effort and energy, arranging and rearranging. And now it’s ruined.” Punctuating every third word with a toss of her hands in the air, Pauline paced the patio. “I didn’t say a word against his career because I didn’t want to project my fears, my issues with her father, onto her life. I’ve bit my tongue, I’ve bent over backward to make this something special for her, something she’d always happily remember, no matter what happened.”
When the older woman’s rant degenerated into mutters interspersed with creative streams of cussing, Tessa made herself review the rant twice to be sure she had it right.
Finally she took a deep breath and, risking being mowed over, stepped in front of Pauline.
“Just to clarify,” she said in her most calming, reasonable tone. “There’s an issue with the wedding because of Mitch’s job?”
“Job? A banker has a job. A lawyer has a job. Hell, even the garbage man has a job. That isn’t a job. It’s a death sentence on all relationships it comes into contact with.”
Then Pauline scared the hell out of her by bursting into tears and throwing herself into Tessa’s arms.
Oh, shit.
Tessa tried to regulate her breathing so she wouldn’t hyperventilate as she patted the other woman’s back. But Pauline’s panic spiked right through the tears with painfully contagious clarity.
“Is Mitch okay?” Tessa asked, needing a few more facts before she let her anxiety take over. “He’s safe?”
She took the wet, sniffling grunt as an affirmative.
“But something about his job is going to ruin the wedding?” she asked, hazarding a guess.
The snuffling grunt was louder this time.
“Can we fix it?” Whatever it was, it had to be fixable.
Pauline didn’t grunt this time, just sobbed louder. Realizing she wasn’t going to get anything useful out of the woman, Tessa cast a frantic look around. Spotting the side door into the bar, she edged closer, Pauline still clinging like a bad date. Tessa managed to catch a waitress’s eye and with one hand indicate a drink before pointing at Pauline. The waitress looked a little horrified, but earned a big tip by grabbing the nearest bottle and a glass and hurrying through the door.
“Thanks,” Tessa murmured before telling her to charge it to her room.
“Do you need anything else?” the girl asked sympathetically.
Tessa frowned, then nodded. “Can you page Roz Evans to come out here?”
Livi’s aunt and mother got along like oil and water, but there was only so much comfort Tessa could handle, and she needed all of it for her friend.
She managed to get Pauline to sit in one of the pretty little bistro chairs, and stuffed a handful of napkins into her hand before pouring a stiff shot of whatever the waitress had brought into a glass.
Tessa knocked it back, then grimaced.
Cheap rum. Nasty, she thought, before refilling the glass for Pauline.
She’d barely convinced the older woman to take it when Roz sauntered through the door.
“I was inspecting their bar and heard my name. What’s up?”
“You are,” Tessa said, thrusting the bottle into her hands. “I’ve got to go help Livi.”
Three minutes later, her head swirling from the low-grade booze on an empty stomach, Tessa knocked on Livi’s door. She’d have made it in two but she’d stopped at the gift shop for emergency chocolate and tissues.
She stuffed her worries into deep freeze, put on her most supportive expression and knocked.
“Hey,” Livi greeted when she opened the door. “I thought you said you had dinner plans.”
Her arms half-lifted for a hug, Tessa opened her mouth, peered closer at he
r friend’s face, then closed her lips.
Livi didn’t look devastated. She didn’t even seem upset.
Tessa’s arms fell and her shoulders slumped.
What was going on?
“I heard there was a problem,” she said slowly, looking around the room in case there was a clue. Or maybe a dead body to hide. She knew if she’d been as Zen as Livi had for this long, she’d definitely have to kill someone.
“A problem? Maybe. But it’ll work out,” Livi insisted, her smile only a little shaky around the edges. “Really, there’s no need to worry.”
Tessa almost threw the chocolates against the wall. What was it going to take to get Livi to show a little anger and act like herself again?
“Apparently there is reason to cry hysterically,” Tessa pointed out acerbically. “I just left your mother bawling on your aunt’s shoulder.”
Livi opened her mouth, looking as if she were going to whitewash that with flowers and puppy dogs, too, so Tessa added, “Over a bottle of cheap rum.”
“Oh.” Livi grimaced. “That’s bad. I’ll have to find her and smooth it over.”
“Oh, no.” Tessa stepped sideways to block the door. “No more smoothing. You’re smooth enough for everyone. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on instead.”
After a quick frown at her blocked escape route, Livi shrugged and sat on the bed. Knowing how sneaky she could be, Tessa tossed the chocolates and tissues on a chair in case she needed her hands.
“Mitch just got word that his leave has been changed,” Livi said, her voice hitching. “He’s been assigned to some special mission. He won’t tell me anything except that he has to report on Thursday.”
Her worst fear confirmed, Tessa leaned against the door and shook her head.
“But you’re getting married Saturday. They can’t do that,” Tessa said, ready to take on the US Navy.
“Yeah. They can.” Livi shrugged. “What can I say? Duty trumps ‘I do.’”
Tessa rubbed her hand over her mouth to keep from snapping bullshit. “What changed? I mean, he had the time approved. It was all arranged. How can they change it? Isn’t his grandfather an admiral? Can’t he pull strings?”
“Maybe. No. I don’t know.” Livi pushed her hands through her hair. “He said it’s complicated. Apparently he wasn’t even supposed to be on this mission but someone was pulled off the team. Then they changed the launch date or whatever he called it, but there isn’t time to bring in someone else.”
Tessa wanted to object.
She wanted to protest.
If it’d help, she’d bitch up a storm.
But she was pretty sure none of that would help and any of it would upset Livi. So she did the next best thing. She tried to think of a solution.
“Okay, then let’s move the wedding up,” she suggested desperately. “Get married tomorrow, or tonight even. I know it’s not ideal, but at least you’ll have a few days together.”
For a second Livi’s face lit up. But just as fast it dimmed again. Her shoulders drooped as she sighed.
“I couldn’t.” She shook her head. “People are expecting the ceremony on Saturday. Some of the guests aren’t even here yet. We can’t disappoint them.”
Her voice trailed off, her expression crumbling a little before she plastered that damned smile on her face again.
Tessa couldn’t help it.
She threw back her head and screamed.
She’d spent the past two months pretending to be something she wasn’t—nice and agreeable. She’d kept her mouth shut instead of voicing her opinion so often that she’d been afraid she’d go mute. She’d put on a smile and played nice with people who drove her batty. All in an attempt to be the right kind of friend.
Well, screw that.
She opened her eyes, ready to tell Livi just what they were going to do to fix this mess.
But apparently she’d finally found a way to burst Livi’s Zen bubble. Now, instead of looking mellow and content, tears waterfalled down her friend’s face onto hands that were shaking too hard to open the tissue box.
“Oh, damn,” Tessa muttered, her own bottom lip trembling. She rushed over to take the tissues, tearing the box in half in her haste. “Don’t cry. Or, here, dry your face. We’ll fix this.”
“We can’t,” Livi wailed. “There’s too much to change. Too many people will be pissed. Mitch and I will have to wait, marry later at city hall or something.”
Oh, hell no. Tessa cringed. There had to be a way to fix this.
“It sucks.” Livi sniffed, sounding like her old self for a moment. “After everything that went into the wedding, all the drama and putting up with my mother, now this happens? I’ve tried to stay positive and optimistic. I don’t want the baby born with frown lines and a negative attitude.”
Tessa blinked. Could that really happen? She didn’t know enough to debate it, so she did the next best thing. She plopped down next to Livi and opened the box of chocolates.
After they’d each had a couple of pieces, she sighed.
“Will worry really mess up the baby’s personality?”
“Maybe. After I read all of the pregnancy books I could find I started on old wives’ tales. Just in case. I might have gone overboard a little.” Livi rubbed her hand over the small bump and shrugged. “The doctor said now that I’m into my second trimester that there’s less risk, but you know...”
Yeah. She wrapped her arm around Livi’s slightly expanded waist. She knew.
Livi gave a watery sigh and dropped her head to rest on hers just as the door opened.
For one second, panic flashed in Super SEAL’s eyes, then bless him, Mitch squared his shoulders and crossed the room to take his fiancée into his arms.
“Aww, sweetie, don’t cry.”
Tessa smiled.
He really was a nice guy. So perfect for Livi.
All of her doubts about their marriage and every worry she’d had fled at the look on his face as he held her best friend.
She’d be damned if anything was going to ruin their wedding. Tessa set her chin and got to her feet.
“Here.” She handed Mitch the candy and went for the door. “I’ve got some things I need to take care of.”
She was finished trying to be the right kind of friend. Now she’d be the only kind she knew how.
A pain-in-the-butt know-it-all smart-ass with excellent taste, fabulous instincts and the ability to get things done.
All she needed was one thing to make it happen.
Gabriel.
* * *
GABRIEL STOOD ON the cliffs watching Mitch marry the woman he loved as the sun rose over the ocean behind them. His eyes cut from the happy couple, their faces glowing as they stared into each other’s eyes, to Tessa. Like him, she was standing back from the couple, letting them take center stage with the minister.
He was a little stunned at how fast Tessa could make things happen. Barely twelve hours ago she’d pounded on his door demanding help. Somehow in that time she’d planned the ceremony, arranged for a wedding breakfast and rescheduled the honeymoon to begin that afternoon.
In other words, she’d cleaned up his mess.
His shoulders knotted with tension, Gabriel remembered his talk with the groom before the ceremony. Irish had insisted that he didn’t blame Gabriel. He’d even tried to claim that he’d requested the assignment to make up for Jeglinski being a fuckup.
But Gabriel knew who the real fuckup was.
If he’d followed his own rules and kept the issue to himself instead of giving in to pressure, he wouldn’t have disappointed the team or let down Irish.
Gabriel didn’t mind paying the price for his decisions.
But he’d be damned if others would, too.
Not his
team. Not his best friend.
And no way in hell the woman he loved.
Which meant he needed to stick with his rules from now on. All of them.
Watching Tessa wipe a tear from her cheek as the bride and groom kissed, he knew letting her go was going to be the hardest thing he’d ever done. Dragging it out wouldn’t make it any easier. Setting his jaw against the sight of Tessa’s joy, he decided to leave right after the happy couple.
Two hours later, Gabriel had one eye on Irish, watching for the signal that he was heading out, and the other on the doors to make sure he had a clear escape route as soon as that happened. He wasn’t proud of the fact, but he needed a little distance before he told Tessa they were through.
“Yo, Romeo. Whatcha doing in the corner?”
Since he wasn’t about to admit that he was avoiding a woman, Gabriel shrugged instead.
“Just watching.”
“Hell of a party, huh?” Lee Martin said. The team gunner was the size of a small bull, but managed to make the crystal flute of champagne look delicate in his beefy hand. “Pure class, ya know.”
Just like the lady who’d planned it all. Gabriel looked around the dining room. From the sparkling crystal to the fabric-draped chairs, it shouted fancy wedding. And from the expression on the bride’s face, it screamed perfect.
“There you are,” Scavenger said, joining them. “Irish was looking for you. Said to make sure you didn’t cut out.”
“Why’s Irish worried?” Martin asked. “It’s not as if Romeo has ever left a party early. Unless it was on the arm of a beautiful woman, of course.”
“You okay, dude?” Scavenger asked, ignoring Martin. “You’re not taking this on, are you? You better not be.”
“That’s crap if you own this,” Martin agreed, his broad face turning ruddy. “Jeglinski was a problem. I’m all for competition and wanting to be the best, but that guy had no regard for boundaries. No respect for the mission. You did right to report him.”
“There were other ways to handle the situation” was all Gabriel said. “Better ways.”