“No, not even in the slightest. You’re only a few years older than me.”
“Six.” She supplied the exact number for him.
“Lena,” he said, gently turning her head so that she stared directly into his eyes. “You are freaking sexy, smart, and incredible in the sack…You’re every fantasy I’ve ever had. Hell, come to think of it, I’m surprised that you’re even talking to me.”
He grinned at her then, and she could not help but laugh at his comment. He had this great self-deprecating sense of humor.
“When do you have to leave?”
“In a couple of hours. I need to check out of the hotel soon so I won’t miss my flight.”
“I wish you could stay here longer with me.”
“Yeah, that would be nice.”
“Well, could you? I mean…could you stay here a bit longer? Like maybe for a few days?” She was finding that she was not quite ready to give him up yet. The more that she learned about him, the more she wanted to know about him.
Jesse didn’t answer her right away and she felt her cheeks start to burn. This time from embarrassment. She immediately regretted asking the question. He probably figured that she was some clingy loser who would now be stalking his every move.
“I should have told you this last night…before we had sex,” he said slowly. “It wasn’t my intent to not be upfront with you. I just wanted you so much. You’re so beautiful and you have this amazing soul about you, Lena. And to have you want me as much as I wanted you—I just couldn’t stop myself.”
“You should have told me what?” she asked, her heart already sinking, not wanting to know what he was convinced he should have told her.
“I can’t make any long-term pledges to you, Lena. I mean, I’m sure you have particular expectations about the direction this relationship is going. But I can’t lie to you and say I can live up to those expectations.”
“Are you saying that you don’t want to see me anymore?”
“No. No. That’s not what I’m saying. I meant that if…if you’re expecting a long-term commitment or marriage—I can’t promise you I can deliver on either one.”
Lifting her head from where it was resting on his chest, she stared into his eyes. He was looking down at her, his arms still wrapped tightly around her, but the earlier mirth in his eyes and voice had vanished.
“I don’t want to upset or disappoint you,” he continued. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want you to think that I’m just some dick who wanted to get your pants off because that’s not true. I do care about you. Very much. But I have to be honest with you too. I haven’t been in a relationship with anyone since Rose. I don’t know how…I don’t know how to be with someone anymore. And as for marriage, shit, let’s just say I’m not planning on getting married to anyone anytime soon, if ever.”
Swallowing, she tried to hide the disappointment in her eyes. It took a while before she could recover her voice, but when she did, she was proud that she sounded more lighthearted than she felt. “Jesse, we just met. I’m not expecting a marriage proposal from you. I admit that I didn’t anticipate you telling me that a long-term relationship was flat out off the table, but I wasn’t exactly planning to run out and tell all of my girlfriends to “Save the Date” either.” Clearing her throat, she looked into his eyes and asked, “Do you like spending time with me?”
“Yes,” he said, with no hesitation, his voice confident and sure.
“Do you like being with me sexually?”
“Hell yes. You know that I do,” he answered, his arms tightening possessively around her waist.
“Maybe marriage is where our story will end,” she said carefully, placing a finger against his lips when he looked like he was about to protest. “But if not, that’s okay too. Maybe it’ll just be an incredible love affair with smoking-hot, mind-blowing, toe-curling sex that ends in a lasting friendship. Or maybe it’ll end badly with both of our hearts bleeding on the pavement. Either way, I’m game to see how this all plays out. If you are.”
He stared at her attentively for a moment. “Are you sure that you’re okay with this?”
“Yes.” And she found that she okay with his unforeseen disclaimer—surprisingly enough. She cared about Jesse, and truthfully, she was probably already a little bit in love with him. That fact alone should have made her very not okay with what he’d just said. But instead, she felt her heart grow for him. He was hurting inside, that she was sure of, even if he couldn’t quite express what he was feeling. In time, she could only hope that he would be able to open up to her more. Besides, despite her strong feelings for him, she didn’t want to rush things. All of the marriages that she’d spent her life watching had never turned out well. Her parents’ disastrous coupling being an excellent illustration of how not to make a relationship work.
“And, you know,” she said, trying to bring some more of the levity back into the room. “Even though you have to leave soon, we still have another hour for me to show you just how ‘incredible in the sack’ I am.” Winking at him, she slipped her leg out from underneath his and sat up to straddle his waist.
He wiggled his eyebrows at her—laugh lines forming around his lips, his eyes full of mischief—and reached out a strong hand to grip her ass and another to glide over her breasts.
“Hoo-yah.”
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
Denison Ranch
Louisville, Kentucky
“Uncle Jesse! Uncle Jesse!
“Hi, there. How’s my favorite little munchkin doing?” Jesse asked as he swept his tiny niece up into his arms. Macie wore a yellow flower print sundress and sandals. With her auburn hair styled into two French braids that hung past her shoulders she looked like a doll.
“I’m not a mun-kin. I’m a big girl.”
Jesse chuckled. “Indeed you are,” he said, lifting her up even higher in the air so that he could swing her around in a circle.
“Where you been this whole long time?” she asked in her soft, yet high-pitched voice.
“You remember what we talked about, honey. Uncle Jesse has been away fighting the bad guys,” Ben reminded his daughter.
The whole gang was here for dinner at the ranch: Jesse’s parents, Ben and his family, Ophelia, and Kyle. The only person missing was Lena. Jesse really wanted her to be here too. He missed her already.
“Did you get them? Did you get the terr-risks?” Macie asked, her already large green eyes widened even more in curiosity.
“Yeah, we got them, sweetheart.”
“How about you go run on inside and help out your mom,” Ben suggested as Jesse set his niece back down on the ground. “Maybe you’ll find a cookie inside of the star jar this time?”
Macie took off with a shriek of pure joy as she ran up the porch steps to the entrance of the house. The women were all inside catching up and helping with the preparation of the evening meal.
“She’s gotten so big,” Jesse murmured as he watched his niece race inside.
“Yeah, don’t I know it? She’s a complete handful. I swear, I feel like I have to grow a third eye in the back of my head just to keep track of her. It seems just like yesterday she was just learning how to sound out words, and now soon she’ll be heading off to kindergarten.”
“Yeah and then, not too long after that, dating.”
“Jesus,” Ben groaned. “I do not want to think about that at all. I can barely wrap my brain around the fact that next year she’ll be in primary school, let alone dating thirty years from now.”
Jesse had to laugh. “Thirty years from now? Keep dreaming.”
“It’s good to see you, man. How have you been?” his brother asked. Jesse had arrived in Louisville late yesterday evening. His parents had decided to host a small gathering since their prodigal son had returned home (at least for a little while). Right now, it was just Ben and he outside, sitting on the porch. Kyle and their father had gone into town to pick up a few items for the bonfire they were havi
ng later on in the evening.
“I’ve been good,” Jesse answered as he took a pull of his beer. “Better than good actually.”
“Really? You weren’t doing so well the last time you called.” The last time Jesse had called had been right after Kincaid’s death.
“Yeah, one of my teammate’s died on a mission. I wasn’t handling it well.”
“What’s changed?”
Lena Westlake. Clearing his throat, Jesse said, “I met someone.”
Now this caught his brother’s attention. “What? When? How?”
“It’s new. It’s a woman I helped rescue a few weeks back.”
Ben let out a low whistle. “Is that smart? Getting involved with someone you met while on the job?”
Jesse took another swallow of his beer. “I’m not sure. I mean, it’s probably not a good idea,” he admitted. “But there’s just something about her. I can’t get her out of my head.”
“If you can’t stop thinking about her then she must really be something. What’s she like?”
“Her name’s Lena. She’s smart. Really, incredibly smart. She’s a petroleum engineer. She’s totally gorgeous too. She’s a blonde. She has this awesome smile. It just lights up a room. And oh man, she has this great personality.”
Ben laughed. “You usually go for brunettes.”
“Yeah, I know. Like I said, there’s just something about her. She’s such a strong person. I mean, the shit that she’s been through over the last month alone would send most people screaming to the loony bin. But not Lena, she’s still standing tall.”
“Hmm. Sounds like you’ve known her for longer than a few weeks, bro.”
“It definitely feels that way.”
“So what’s your hesitation?”
“I’m not sure.” Leaning forward in his chair, Jesse looked out into the yard and gathered his thoughts. “She’s been through a lot this past month, man. I don’t want to take advantage of her.”
“How would you be taking advantage of her?”
Jesse was silent for a moment, his brows knitted together as a frown burrowed its way across his forehead. “I know she wants more. She’s not just going to be happy with a sexual relationship.”
“Is that what you told her you wanted, just sex?”
“Yeah.”
Ben choked, spitting out his beer. Still coughing, he stared at his brother in sheer disbelief. “Really? You actually said that?”
“Yeah. I wanted to be honest with her.”
“Were you?”
“Was I what?”
“Being honest?” Jesse’s deafening silence must have been answer enough for his brother because Ben plowed on. “Have you asked her what she wanted?”
“Yeah.”
“And?”
“She said that she’s okay with just seeing where things go, even if that doesn’t lead to anything long-term.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
Jesse mulled the question over. “Shit. The problem is that she deserves more, even if she doesn’t realize that right now. She deserves her prince charming and happily ever after—complete with picket fences, two point five kids, and whatever the hell else women dream about from the time that they are little girls. She deserves a whole hell of a lot more than I can give her.”
Ben just stared at him, taking in the exasperation on his younger brother’s face. “Don’t you think you’re being a little hard on yourself here? How long are you going to torture yourself?”
Jesse didn’t respond, just took another pull of his beer, this time the ice-cold brew tasted flat and unpalatable to his taste buds.
“You know what happened with Rose was not your fault,” Ben said quietly.
Rose Ford. The first woman who’d given Jesse thoughts about settling down. She had had classic, smoldering knockout looks, but she’d also been practical and sweet. He’d met her while taking classes at UC-San Diego. Their relationship had slowly blossomed, and he’d fallen for her. She had had this endearing innocence about her that had immediately drawn him to her. The next logical step in their relationship had been marriage. He’d been gathering up the courage to propose to her when she’d been killed in a home invasion robbery. The fact that he hadn’t been home to protect her—he’d been away on a mission at the time—still haunted him.
Inclining farther back in his chair, Ben let out pained-filled sigh that sounded more like a groan. “Jesse, that happened two and a half years ago, man. It was tragic, but what happened wasn’t your fault.”
“Thanks, I didn’t know that there was a timetable on grief,” he said dryly. “And how the hell is it not my fault? I was her boyfriend—I was this close to marrying her—and I wasn’t there when she needed me the most. Now she’s dead. Not just dead. Murdered. Raped and stabbed thirty-two times. She was fucking destroyed. And I didn’t protect her. I could have been there for her. I should have been there.”
“You were OCONUS, Jesse. It would have been impossible for you to have made it to her in time. Her death was not your fault.”
Jesse shook his head. “It was an optional assignment. I volunteered for it. I was new to the team. I wanted to prove that I was tough shit, and that I deserved to be called a SEAL. I should have been there with her in San Diego. I should have been there to keep her safe. And if I couldn’t even protect Rose. How the hell will I be able to take care of Lena? She lives in Africa, for Christ’s sake.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t think that far ahead. You like this girl, that’s obvious. Does she make you happy?”
Jesse thought about the question for a moment before confiding. “I’m happier than I’ve been in a really long time. The sex alone is unbelievable. But there’s more than that. She has such a great personality, I actually feel like I can be myself around her.”
“Then it sounds like you have your answer. Just take things one day at a time and see where it goes. Maybe it develops into a relationship, maybe not. Either way, you have to realize that you are only human. You can’t prevent every bad thing from happening to people you care about. And just because something bad happens that you can’t stop, it doesn’t mean that you are responsible.”
“How did you do it?” Jesse asked after a while, squinting against the sun as he shifted his head to look at his older brother.
“Do what?”
“Figure out that you wanted to commit to Corrine?”
“I don’t want to sound like some cliché Hallmark Card, but it really is something you just know. You don’t have to know it right away, but when it hits you—man, it just hits.”
“Hmm…I don’t know. What Mom and Dad have, I don’t think I’ll ever find that with anyone.”
Ben was quiet for a bit. “Maybe not. What Mom and Dad have is rare. But you’ll never know until you put yourself out there. And I know you’re not happy with the one night stands. You should give this girl a shot.”
“What are you two gossiping about out here like a couple of old ladies?” The question was accompanied by a jarring slam of the front porch door of the three-story, robin-egg blue ranch house. Ophelia. His little sister always knew how to make an entrance.
“Hey, O,” Ben said. “We were just talking about Jesse’s new lady friend.”
“Ooh, you have a girlfriend, Jesse? Since when?” Ophelia’s piercing excitement practically caused one of his eardrums to start bleeding. She was outfitted in a pair of red and white Pumas, white shorts and a bright red top emblazoned with “Queen” across the front and “Bee” across the back. Yeah, that was O in a nutshell. Apparently, she was going through a ‘90s urban style phase right now.
“I don’t have a girlfriend. How’s school? You break up with that meathead you were dating last Christmas?”
“Ah Ah,” she said, wagging her index finger at Jesse before plopping down in one of the other porch chairs. Smacking her chewing gum, Ophelia’s blue eyes gleamed brightly as her gaze darted mischievously from Ben then back over to him. “Even though my fa
vorite topic of conversation is moi, you’re not going to distract me that easily. But yes, me and the ‘meathead’ as you love to call him are still involved. Now, back on topic. Who is this mystery woman? And when can we meet her? Or more importantly, when can I meet her? You should have brought her to the shindig.”
Jesse had to stifle a groan as he shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He loved all of his siblings, but he did not make it a habit to talk about is love life—or lack thereof—with his baby sister.
“I have a friend, that’s all.”
“Uh huh. Okay, act all shy if you want. I’ll get it out of you eventually. So you might as well talk now.”
Jesse looked over at Ben for help, but his brother had suddenly and conveniently become very engrossed in his Blackberry.
“I met her recently,” Jesse confided to his sister, “It’s new.”
“You never talk about anyone anymore. So she must be pretty cool. What does she do?”
“She’s an engineer.”
“Oh wow, a smartie. I’m liking her already. You should bring her down here to meet us.”
“We’re not at that point yet.”
“Ah, okay I can wait. Especially since you said yet.”
“So?”
“Yet implies that there’s going to be more to this story,” she said with a cheeky grin spreading across her face.
“Yeah, maybe,” Jesse said. Maybe.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
Five Days Later
Walvis Bay, Namibia
It was A gorgeous day outside. The sun hung high in the sky, and a cool breeze fluttered the hem of the polka dot blouse she was wearing. The sweet smells of white gardenia flowers now in bloom floated up to her nose, providing a wonderful, fresh fragrance that seemed to proclaim a new beginning. It was invigorating because she of all people needed a relaunch on life.
She had started her morning in the kitchen, getting an early start on baking in preparation of Philip’s visit tomorrow. Her brother had a ridiculously sweet tooth, and so her plan was to surprise him by having homemade chocolate éclairs, Red Velvet cake, and caramelized banana pudding ready for his stay.
Swift Strike (SEAL Team 14 Book 2) Page 14