SEAL's Touch: A Dirty Bad Boy Romance (Small Town SEALs Book 3)

by Vivian Wood

  The guards each took an arm, carrying her out the doors and to the street. “Let me go!”

  “Go on,” said the first guard. “Stay off the property.”

  She flipped him off and ran to her car. Once inside, she let her poorly cloaked emotions out, sobbing and hitting the steering wheel.

  She opened the packet the guard gave her with shaking fingers. It was a legal notice, terminating her position at Calloway Corp.

  He was done with her. Really, truly done.

  Once her crying jag was done, she felt strangely hollow. She started up her car and drove home, unsure what else to do.

  She’d had it all worked out…

  28

  The next day at work, Smith was a complete wreck. Not only did his girl turn out to be a reporter, but his father was the one fucking with the company’s finances. And he’d done it by screwing the employee pensions, no less.

  He honestly didn’t know who he felt more betrayed by right now.

  Smith showed up to work late. He walked past Cameron’s empty desk as if nothing had happened, but it felt like a physical punch to the gut. Once he got inside his office, he shut the door and leaned his back against it.

  He closed his eyes for a minute, trying to center himself. He had bigger things to worry about than Cameron. He was going to have to confront his father about the missing money today.

  He was going to need to get the thoughts of her out of his head, though. The same few ideas were rolling around inside, like how she could have done this. She seemed genuinely distressed by the whole thing.

  Maybe that was just an act, but if it was, it was a good performance.

  His hands bunched into fists. How the fuck was he supposed to straighten out the rest of this mess, when he couldn’t trust himself to know whether Cameron really cared for him or not?

  He took slow, deep breaths, calming himself. He straightened and popped his neck, readying himself for combat. Then he headed back out of his office, ignoring the twist in his gut when he saw the empty desk.

  He went downstairs first, to talk to the guys at the security desk. Stone-faced, he told the guards flat out that his father was probably embezzling money from the employee pension fund. He explained that he was going to confront his father immediately, and asked them to back him up.

  Their response was what his had been. Something like shock, followed by agreeing that something had to be done.

  When Smith went back upstairs, there were four guards following him, with two more sitting and watching the cameras in the building. Smith’s hands shook as they approached his father’s office.

  “Smith,” the secretary said. She frowned at the security guards. “What’s going on?”

  “I need you to go down to the fifth floor right now. Tell Stephanie I said she should keep you company,” Smith said. “I can’t tell you any more, except to say that you’re not in trouble.”

  She stood, pale and shaking. One of the guards motioned for her to move over to him, and she went.

  Smith walked up to his father’s door, hesitating. He adjusted his tie, although the thing was already constricting his throat.

  I can do this, he told himself.

  He reached out and pushed his father’s office door open, stepping inside. His father swiveled around in his chair. He was holding the phone on his desk to his ear. His father held up a finger, motioning for Smith to wait.

  “Jerry, Jerry— listen. Forget about Thailand, okay?” his father said. “Okay. Alright. Listen, my son just walked in with a serious face, so I’m going to have to let you go. Alright. Send Natalie my love.”

  Spencer hung up the phone.

  “Jerry Newman wants to talk about contracting us to guard his Spanish interests. It isn’t a big project, but it could lead to something bigger,” his father said.

  Smith frowned at his father, who took off his glasses and tossed them on the desk.

  “What is it?” his father asked. “Did Europe fall off the map or something?”

  Smith grew angrier.

  “It’s over, Dad.”

  “What is?”

  “The scam. The whole thing where you ravage the employee pensions and then leave the rest for me to clean up,” Smith spat. “Not only do I know about it, but Cameron does, too.”

  “Your office girl? Well, no matter. I can pay her whatever she wants,” his father said.

  “It’s not about fucking paying people off!” Smith yelled. “Cameron, who you selected just for me, is working for The Daily News. I just found out that they’re doing an exposé on Calloway Corp!”

  Spencer looked taken aback. “Well, we must stop them!”

  “You don’t get it, Dad! There is no stopping, not anymore. Not that I even want to. The worst part of this whole mess is that you were going to leave me saddled with… well, who even knows how much debt! And the employees… the angry employees who’ve had everything stolen from them… they’ll look to me!!”

  “Look. It’s my company. I can take what I want, when I want. You’ll recover the losses in less than five years,” his father said, rising from his chair.

  “What…” Smith was at a loss. “What are you talking about?”

  “Five years! That’s nothing. That’s the blink of an eye for companies,” his father said, turning toward the window.

  “And the angry employees? How am I supposed to deal with that?”

  “This is a great opportunity. You step into my shoes, reassure everyone you’ve got it under control, and deal with the money. In a year, you’ll be thanking me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Look. The board,” his father said, making air quotes around the word board, “they put me on a very strict allowance. I can only withdraw twenty thousand a month. Can you believe it? Me!”

  Smith narrowed his eyes. “What are you talking about?”

  “They said… back in the nineties, they said I was spending too much.” His father started to pace, agitated. “The board said I had to live on that… that ridiculous amount of money! They said that the company couldn’t stay afloat, otherwise. It was complete bollocks, I’ll tell you that.”

  “What the fuck do you need more money than that for?” Smith cried, looking at his father with an incredulous expression.

  “For women, of course!” his father shouted back. “They all need things, you know. ‘Buy me this, buy me that’. If I don’t have nice things around me, I can’t expect decent girls. Ever since your selfish fucking mother left me—”

  Smith swooped in, grabbing his father by the throat.

  “She committed suicide,” Smith snarled in his father’s face. “And I’m beginning to see why.”

  He let his father go, pushing him away.

  “She was just a selfish little bitch. And she made you a selfish brat,” his father said, straightening his suit.

  “Don’t you fucking talk about her!” Smith screamed.

  “Just you wait. Just you wait till you’re my age. I’ve seen you with girls, you’re fucking incompetent. Couldn’t pick up a woman to save your life.”

  Smith just stared at his father, incensed. The older man leered at Smith.

  “You’re going to be like me in one way,” Spencer said. “You’re going to end up alone, just like me.”

  Smith turned toward the door, shaking his head with disgust.

  “I’m nothing like you.”

  He flung the door open, moving out of the office. He called to the guards.

  “He’s not to leave that office. Pull the phone lines, and set up a cell phone signal jammer in there. I’m calling the police,” he gritted out as he walked away from his father’s office.

  The guards hastened to do Smith’s bidding. Smith pulled out his cell phone, taking a deep breath. He dialed the number of the local precinct.

  Taking another breath, he pressed send and waited for an answer.

  29

  Smith sat in his light blue classic Mustang convertible, unsure w
here he should go. He leaned his head against the steering wheel, exhausted beyond measure.

  The last few days had been shitty, to say the least. He had called the police on his own father, but when they had arrived… he’d opened the door to his father’s office, only to find it empty.

  When Smith had checked the security cameras, they showed his father being smuggled out of the building by one of the security guards. The guard and Smith’s father had slipped away. Later a recording emerged of his father getting on his private plane, bound for the Maldives.

  He spent the next three days surrounded by Calloway Corp’s expensive lawyers, answering questions from the police and dodging angry employees and journalists. The media quickly caught on to the story The Daily News had written, and turned it into a maelstrom.

  The reporters had turned every moment of downtime into a siege. He was on the run from the press, going from his building to the Escalade in a whirlwind of people shouting and cameras flashing. Things got to the point where he was staying at a hotel, rather than at his penthouse.

  To top off a week's worth of utter bullshit, he’d received a message last night on his personal phone, notifying him of Charles DuPointer’s death.

  “He passed quickly, in his sleep,” the lawyer handling Charles’ will said. “There is something that he wanted you to have. It’s small, so I messengered it over to you per his instructions. You should receive it in the morning.”

  Smith had hung up, not knowing what to feel. Charles’ death was just one more stick on the funeral pyre that was his life.

  This morning, he’d woken late. He’d received the parcel that Charles’ attorney had spoke of, a box no bigger than a grapefruit, wrapped in plain brown paper. He couldn’t deal with opening it just yet, so he took it with him when he left the room.

  Slipping out of the hotel unseen was tricky, but he’d managed to do it. He called his car service and asked for his car to be brought around to the block he was at, hopping in it the second he saw his distinctive car. He dropped the package in the back seat.

  After dropping the chauffeur off a few blocks away, Smith just drove until he was way outside of the city. He’d stopped for a bite to eat at a roadside diner, then sat in his car, head down. He was out of ideas, out of inspiration.

  He thought of the last time he was this far outside the city, when he was with Cameron. They’d gone to the beach, her private place. He considered going there; after all, he had driven them back last time. He remembered how to get there perfectly.

  He could just drive there, maybe get a hotel room. No one would be looking for him there, at least.

  That last thought decided it for him. He put the car in drive, pulling out of the parking lot. He drove for about an hour before he pulled up in front of the rickety old sign that said “Owl Point.”

  Smith got out of the car and walked down to the beach, looking at the waves. The water was mesmerizing. He sat down close to the place where the tide came onshore, shielding his eyes from the sun.

  He thought of a young Cameron, coming here to work through her troubles. When he closed his eyes, he could almost see her. Long, coppery strands of hair wrapped around her small frame. Her freckled face emotionless, contrary to what was going on inside. The waves crashed again and again, reflected in her bright blue eyes.

  He opened his eyes, blinking away the vision. The waves kept coming, glittering as the sun hit them.

  He wondered what the hell Cameron had been thinking when she started this whole thing. Maybe she’d been offered something juicy in exchange for betraying him.

  I never planned for any of this to happen, she’d said. I care about you.

  Somewhere deep inside, he knew her words were true. But at the moment he was so angry that it didn’t matter. Angry at her, angry at his father, even angry at Charles for putting fanciful ideas in his head.

  He was angry at the whole world, because no one that he cared about was on his side.

  Cared about echoed in his head. That was the problem, wasn’t it? He had really started to care for Cameron, to fall for her even, and then she’d gone and done this.

  He stared at the ocean, trying to make sense of it all. Nothing came to him though, no revelation to make him feel better.

  He remembered Charles’ package, sitting in the back seat of his car. He stood up, brushing himself off, and jogged back to his car. He picked up the package from the back seat, then sat on the hood of his car.

  He inhaled deeply, realizing that he held one of the very last things Charles had touched. His friend had been eccentric, that much was certain, but a certain amount of gravitas was due in this moment.

  Smith unwrapped the parcel slowly, wondering what Charles could have given him. He found a box, with several things inside: a note, a velvet ring box, and a collection of photographs.

  He looked at the photos first. They were of Charles as a very young man. In some he was dancing with a beautiful blonde girl. In others he was hanging out with a larger group of people, but the blonde was there, too.

  He picked up the letter, opening it.

  Smith,

  Her name was Eloise. Pretty, was she not? She made the stars shine more dimly, so beautiful was Eloise. I wish I’d known then that I felt love, not something ephemeral.

  I never told you the end of our story, because I am something of a coward. You see, Eloise was your grandmother. Your grandfather knew that I’d passed Eloise over, and swooped in to snatch her up. Clever man!

  It wasn’t until she was gone, until I read her death notice in the paper, that I could bring myself to call upon your grandfather again. We became friends once more, bonded over losing the only woman we’d ever loved.

  She died in a car crash. Nothing could have been done to prevent it, but your grandfather and I both mourned nonetheless.

  I suffered in silence, knowing that I had missed out on her life. Maybe if I’d married her, she wouldn’t have been in that car. But even if she was, I would have had her in my life for twenty years, and had the children she bore after that.

  When your grandfather passed away, he left me the only thing he had left of hers. The ring he proposed to her with, the symbol of all the things I foolishly missed in my life. I kept it all these years, knowing that I would find a use for it.

  If I’d married your grandmother I would not be where I am today, looking out over the impersonal city skyline of Tokyo, wishing for more. Instead, all I have are my loyal servants. I have so much, yet in the end, I lack the one thing worth living for.

  I do not tell you this so you can pity me. You know me, I want much more than that. No, I want to encourage you to find that which I could not. I want you to find love, and hold on to it with all you’ve got.

  I hope that you will be able to set aside your family, your status, and your position with the family company in your search. Love is always complicated, and never easy, but in the end it is undoubtedly worth having.

  Hopefully, the enclosed jewelry will help spur you on your course. May it be better luck for you than it was for me.

  With my deepest admiration,

  Charles DuPointer

  Smith set the letter aside, and opened the ring box. Inside was a glowing diamond ring, set with glittering sapphires on each side. The sapphires were the exact color of Cameron’s eyes.

  He snapped the box closed, the set the whole package aside. He lay back on the hood of his car, his mind whirling. Charles had been in love with Smith’s grandmother, apparently.

  The story of Charles’ complex friendship with Smith’s grandfather was a bit stunning, no doubt. The longing that Charles had felt… it had lasted his whole life.

  Smith thought of Cameron. He thought of late nights in bed, of the way he felt when he held her. The image sent goosebumps across his skin, even now in the warm seaside sunlight.

  He cared for her. Hell, he loved her, if he allowed himself to admit it. But she had betrayed him, betrayed his trust.

  Would
that feeling just go away? Or would Smith spend the rest of his life thinking of Cameron as the one that got away?

  He stared off into the glinting waves, wishing for an answer.

  30

  Cameron slumped on her couch, flipping through the five news-only channels that her cable subscription paid for. The news stations were obsessively covering the whole Calloway Corp scandal, talking heads shouting about corporate greed and personal liability. She had the TV on mute, because she couldn’t hear another minute of it.

  She stopped flipping, watching the clip of Spencer Calloway heading out across the tarmac to his private plane. She’d seen it before. Everyone had seen it by now.

  The clip was blurry, but she could easily make out the unmistakable sight of the senior Calloway leaving the United States. The words MANHUNT: WHERE IS SPENCER CALLOWAY NOW?? were splashed across the screen.

  In the ten days since the story had broken, it seemed like everything had happened at hyperspeed. She pulled back from The Daily News the day after being fired from Calloway Corp, opting out of appearances about the story over Erika’s screamed objections. Then she stopped returning The Daily News’ calls altogether.

  She tried to call Smith about a hundred times over her first three days of self-exile, then eventually she stopped that, too. Now she was just resigned and a little depressed. She'd made herself get up and shower today, but she was letting her machine and voicemail pick up all her calls.

  She shifted on the couch as the landline phone started ringing. She looked over at where it sat on the kitchen counter. The machine picked up, her voice asking the caller to leave a message.

  “Cameron! It’s Russ, at The Boston Chronicle. We met a couple years ago, when we were both interns? Anyway, saw your byline on the Calloway story. Incredible work! If you’re looking to move anytime soon, give me a call…”

  He left his number and hung up. Cam moved so that she was lying down. It seemed like it was about the only activity she had energy for these days.