“I’ve got a lot of work to do before the guests get here. Thirty-six RSVPed this year, plus all of us.” He circled a hand in the air to include the Phillips crowd. “I’ve been working on a new adaptation to my barbeque rub.”
“Hell hath no fury like your rub.” Tony sipped his own brew. After the acrobatics of last night’s loving, he needed a liter of this. Caffeine to think straight. Eggs and bacon to renew his stamina. The woman had worn him out. “Can I help you pile up the wood for the bonfire?”
“Got to ask the Commander about that.” Caesar’s dark head indicated the house next door. “We haven’t had much rain so the county put in a burn ban. Might not be able to light a fire tonight. Have to make do with just the dance.”
“Too bad.”
The older man shrugged, then seized Tony with a deadpan look. “Want to give me a headline about last night?”
Caesar, emperor of all he surveyed. And he surveyed every detail. Including me chasing after Cass. “No.”
“None of my business?”
“No.” Not yet.
“But you will.”
His dad didn’t sound tentative about too many issues, ever. So this was novel. “If there is anything you need to know, yes.”
Caesar frowned at him. “That young woman has suffered quite a bit since Ray died.”
Tony set his jaw. His father rarely upbraided him, rarely had to. When he did, it chafed like hell. “I know. I am being careful.” Going slowly as I can without spooking her—or myself.
“Fine then. Let’s hear about the arm. When you came in yesterday, we never had a chance to talk. I want to know the status before your sister’s hen party wakes up and pecks their way through your gentlemanly reserve.”
Tony chuckled. How he loved his dad who understood what it was to be a man in uniform with women attempting to get him out of it. “Pins came out of the hand, you knew that.”
“I did. Motion in the fingers?”
Tony raised his left arm, the brace once more in place this morning after the work-out he’d given it last night. He wiggled his fingers. “Range of motion is limited. We thought it would be a wider radius by now but no. Maybe it will improve. Chances decline with each day, though. A problem persists with the strength in the fingers.”
“And your PT?”
“Has improved it. Hell, when I first got Stateside I couldn’t flex at all. The ulna has healed. Fast. Docs are pleased with that.” He took another drink of his coffee.
“But?”
“Seems I might have some spinal damage affecting my fingers.”
His dad took that news with a narrowing of his eyes. “Severe?”
“Don’t know yet. By some standards, I should have recovered strength in the thumb and index finger. But others say it’s early to put a final analysis to it.”
“What’s your mental state?”
Growing up in a military family, side by side with other such families, few topics that affected the health or welfare of individuals were forbidden. Diplomacy was a luxury for other people. Finesse, a useful tactic, was employed in degree. Honesty and trust were the highest virtues. One cultivated them. Between his dad and him, blunt facts were the order of the day.
“I’m on even keel. I understand I might not be the best sniper after this. Depending on range of motion in my shoulder, I may have a challenge executing mission readiness there. But I’m still a crack engineer. A great hustle man. I am concerned that the numbness in my left forearm and fingers might disqualify me for missions. I could worry about that, but know it won’t do me any good. So I bide my time.”
“Doing what?”
“I painted my condo last week. Read a few novels. Most of my day is PT. I’ll go down to the rec room and do a few this morning.”
“Need help? Should I come spot you for lifts?”
“Yeah. Thanks. I could use your assist.” He smiled at his dad, grateful for the offer and even more grateful for the chance to talk about the change he might have to make in his life. “I’ve also learned that there’s an opening for an instructor at Coronado.”
“They offered it to you?”
“My CO told me about it. I haven’t inquired, haven’t applied officially. Not until I know for sure about this.” He flexed his fingers again, gauging what he could do with them today. Sadly it wasn’t much more than yesterday.
But the idea of becoming an instructor meant he would leave his team, the men to whom he owed his loyalty and allegiance. If he left them, would he feel as though he was deserting them for a cushy alterative? Sure, but it wasn’t like being an instructor meant a SEAL could become a vegetable. Far from it. Still, he hadn’t really solved his conflict about changing his lifestyle. Whatever he had developing now with Cass added another aspect to that possible change. But that was between him and her for now.
He told his dad what he did know. “Coronado’s farther away from all of you. I’m used to seeing you often.”
“Yeah. Makes it tough to catch a hop when you’re three thousand miles from home. But it’s not the worst thing that could happen. If you go, we’ll deal, son.”
“Go?” His mother stepped around the corner, hair in her neat little bob, tee and shorts on ready for the day’s work. She cupped Tony’s cheek, bid him good morning and kissed him. “Who’s going where?”
“Maybe me. Maybe not. Meanwhile, you are sitting there,” Tony told her, pointing to the spot beside his dad. “Let me pour you a cup.”
“Terrific. But while you do, tell me where you are going.”
Tony explained his situation all over again.
“In all those nice words,” she said with the look of reason on her face, “I hear only one thing. Desire to stay in service.”
Tony smiled. “Got that right.”
“So then,” she said, gazing at him with serene brown eyes, “I think you are wise to wait to hear what the doctors say.”
He met his father’s gaze. Help me out, Dad. To talk with his mother about the total dedication a SEAL required to qualify and to survive danger after danger was a conversation Tony had conducted only twice in his life. Once when he passed BUD/s training and the second, after Ray died. His mom accepted his choice to become a SEAL, but she reserved her right not to like it. She was a military wife, through and through, but the chances that her oldest son took with his life were so high, she declared she was prepared to stand her ground as a mother first.
Caesar nodded at him. “Ruth, if he is less than one hundred percent on board, he suffers from poor performance.”
“It’s the thrill of the chase you crave,” she said. “That I know. The adrenalin. The rush of success. But if your body won’t allow you to be the best fighting machine possible, then you must find what you can do well to contribute to the cause. No foul in that.”
Tony nodded. “Once you’re the best, it’s a blow to be anything other.”
“You’ve bested the odds for six years, Tony. Now you have this.” She indicated his arm. “To train the best, you need to be equally as good. Maybe even stronger, wiser. Wouldn’t you say, Caesar?”
His dad merely grinned.
His mother rolled a shoulder. “Fine. Don’t say it. But it seems simple to me.”
Getting to his feet, Caesar raised his cup to toast his wife and son then headed for the back door. “I have to go over to talk to the Commander. Back in ten.”
“So,” his mother began as soon as his dad was out of earshot headed for Tom’s and Peg’s house, her sable eyes wide with question. “Last night.”
Oh, boy. Here was the second wave advancing on him. “What can I tell you?”
“About what is going on with you and Cass? As much as you should to ease my fears for you both.”
“Mom, really.” He felt his cheeks getting hot. Christ, was he blushing in front of his mother? “That just happened and I didn’t plan to— Shit. That sounds bad.”
“Don’t worry. I know you wouldn’t take advantage of her. But Cass has
been through hell these past few years.”
These past few years? The wording brought him up short. What did they imply? He waited for more.
“Ray’s drinking.” She didn’t ask if he knew, but cut to the chase.
Jesus H.
“Their marriage suffered from it. What relationship wouldn’t?”
“Mom, I have a tough time talking about this.” Finding my bearings? This was personal stuff he hardly ever debated. His private life had always been so stable, so serene that he’d never had to work at it.
His mother slid off her stool and glared at him. “Well, I need to speak my piece, Lieutenant. I see Cass has recovered from Ray’s death. Maybe more quickly than she might have if she hadn’t stopped caring for him long before he died.”
Geez. His mother read people like open books. “You astonish me.”
“My aim in life. But now here this. I love that young woman. She is beautiful, courageous and wise. She has hung in there for the most difficult life there is, the wife of a man who loves his job and his country first, no holds barred. And now we come to this crossroad with her and you.”
“Mom, really—”
“Hear me. Do what you will. You are both adults and old enough to know yourselves. I trust you to be prudent about this. I did not raise a cretin. But I want you happy. To have a woman you love. A partner who adores you for all you are. You deserve that. Maybe even need it. But I also know that you have loved that woman since you were twenty.”
Wow. His mother had seen that he had cared for Cass and she had never hinted. Never implied she knew or worried or sorrowed. He shook his head.
“Think with your brains.”
Not his dick. She was right. “I will. I promise.”
She sniffed. “It’s a noble thing to please your mother.” She winked at him. “Now get out of my kitchen. I have to feed forty-odd people their requisite Fourth of July potato salad and coleslaw, bake two chocolate cakes, yada yada yada. And if you don’t stop gawking at me, I will put an apron on those muscles and make you look like a girl.”
He did a salam and got the hell out of Dodge. Shit. Everybody had a piece of him this morning.
He took his coffee to the basement, his intention to lose himself in sweat, the physical therapy kind while he planned precisely what he was going to do today to improve his own life and everyone he cared for.
****
Cass took the stairs down to the kitchen at a run, right on Jon’s heels. She hadn’t felt so marvelous in ages. What great sex can do for a girl. Make you limber. Make you laugh.
God, what she had with Nero last night had been a revelation. Wanting him sexually these past few months had been an urge—physical, undeniable and disturbing. Last night had proven to her that he could want her, too. But beyond that… She should look. Decide if there should be more. But oh, the delight of being with him was so new, so raw, so delicious, she just wanted to savor what she’d had with him.
She shivered at the remembrance. If she thought of him too much, she’d get all hot and bothered, get herself geared up for more of those orgasms and then she’d be lost. A hot chick with a hungry pussy. Looking for sex, when what she feared most was that she’d find love.
In the wrong place.
Pushing up the long sleeves of her T-shirt, she smiled at her mother-in-law. “Okay. I’m ready to roll out that dough, Peg. It should be the right temperature now, don’t you think?”
“I do, honey.” Her mother-in-law threw her a tight smile, up to her elbows in her hamburger mix.
“I want to go out,” Jon said, pouting.
“To the sandbox,” Cass told him. “No farther.”
“Want to find Tony. He said last night that we’d swim.”
“I know, sugar. He’ll come over when he can.”
“Can’t I go get him?” He looked eager. Too eager to go.
Ah. Jon feared Tony wouldn’t show. A remnant of Tony’s absence from Jon’s life the last few months. “I’m certain he’ll come get you, Jon.”
“Actually, Tony is right outside, working with your grandpa, Jon,” Peg told the boy. “They’re hauling out the tables and chairs on the lawn.”
“Okay!” Jon ran for the back door.
As it slapped against the frame, Peg laughed. “It’s so good Jon has Tony in his life.”
“It is.” Cass busied herself by digging out the bowl from the refrigerator. Peg and the Commander had no idea that Tony had stopped visiting Jon. They didn’t even know that Ray had lapsed his attentions as a dad. Some things they didn’t need to learn. They had enough to mourn with the death of their oldest son. Cass wouldn’t make it worse by sharing negative information.
“I gather you like Tony, too?”
That put Cass on full alert, facing Peg but trying to answer with some objectivity. “I always have.”
Peg shook her head, her eyes serious. “Not this way, you haven’t.”
“Peg. Please don’t probe. This thing with Tony is so new that I don’t want to talk about it. Let me live with it for a while.” Let me discover the joy of being with him as more than a friend. Let me figure out if I can do that.
“I will, honey. I just want you to know that whatever you decide is good with us.”
Cass stared into her mother-in-law’s sea blue eyes. She had loved this woman as if she were her own mother. Loved the Commander as if he were her dad. Both her parents were gone, dying in a crash in her dad’s small jet when she was a senior in college. She would march a thousand miles before she ever hurt their feelings. “You…you talked about this with the Commander?”
“After we put Jon to bed last night, yes, we did.”
Cass caught her breath.
“We trust you to make good decisions. All of us are so close, so…intertwined. Have been for more than sixteen years.”
“I know. I feel the responsibility here not to blow this.” That was one factor that held me back, made me consider my desire for Tony over and over again.
“You won’t. You’re too methodical. Too careful.”
Right. Cass wanted to hoot in laughter. You wouldn’t think I was so careful if you’d seen how I made love to Anthony Nero. I was a wild woman with few rational thoughts.
“Now get that rolling pin working, will you? If you let that dough get warm, it won’t spread for you.”
The faith Peg expressed in her judgment warmed her though, head to toe. “Yes, ma’am.”
Minutes later, Cass strolled out to the deck. Wiping her hands on a towel, she gazed out on the lawn where the Nero and Phillips men were completing the set up for the afternoon and evening. The two older men, Caesar and the Commander, directed the younger ones. Tony popped his head up now and then, securing joints on the tables. Ray’s two younger brothers, Paul and Jack, did the grunt work of dragging the carts of metal folding chairs to the tables and setting them up.
Tony saw her from yards away, paused and smiled at her with those luscious black eyes. Jon tugged at his hand, chattering about going swimming if she read his gestures correctly. Tony nodded, pointing him in her direction for permission. Jon scrambled up the steps of the deck.
“Can I go swimming? Can I? Can I?”
“Go put on your trunks.”
“Yippee!” Jon did windmills with his arms and raced inside.
When she looked up, Tony still had his gaze trained on her…and they promised seduction and satisfaction.
She shifted, her blood heating, roaring in her ears as she recalled his hands on her, his mouth, his tender kisses against her feminine folds. She suppressed a cry as her core pulsed.
He was so appealing. Where had her mind been the first time she’d met him?
Truth was, the first time she had looked at Tony, she liked his looks better than Ray’s. Tall, dark and handsome was her mantra, even with College Park guys she dated. But Ray, blond and dashing, was so charming, so persistent to get her to say yes to a date with him that she agreed. Never thinking it would amount to an
ything more than one event with Ray, she was shocked when he called her for another. She discarded the idea of dating Ray’s buddy. Tony had faded into the background and become merely Ray’s pal as Ray stepped up his campaign to date her.
She had had no idea she could fall in love with a Navy man. Didn’t even know what that implied for a lifestyle or her future. Her folks were real estate brokers, good at it, newly rich from it. When they died in that crash two months after she started dating Ray, she had been devastated and he had been oh so consoling. Driving to Maryland on weekends, attending the funeral with her even though she told him he didn’t have to, Ray had walked into her life in a substantive way.
He romanced her with flowers and sweet talk, the glamour of his appointment as a midshipman. Then, he aced all that by taking her home to meet his marvelous family and she fell right in with them. All white lace and calla lilies, she had married him in the Navy chapel the week he got his commission. In the next year, she learned how to be a military spouse, patient and patriotic, waiting alone in a tiny apartment in Tampa while he sailed the seven seas and she practiced being supportive and uncomplaining.
She hadn’t resented the demands on her. Not at first. Hadn’t her mother bolstered her dad? What Cass got in return for her support was a stable if solitary home life—and a huge extended family she saw once a year. The biggest boon was her friendship with other service wives who gave the same as she did and were darn proud of it. She had been proud to be Ray’s wife. But after two years based in Florida, the man she knew as a happy-go-lucky middie qualified for SEAL training in Coronado, California. After that, he became the hard ass SEAL she barely understood. StingRay suddenly personified his name.
He grew silent, brooding and touchy. His personality could change without warning, quickly and often. His temper was red, hot. His words were blue. She recoiled and objected to his tone. He would apologize. The job, he’d say. Sorry, baby. The verbal attacks—none were physical, thank heavens—became more frequent, even when he wasn’t fresh from a mission. Then he had no excuse to cover his outbursts. His drunks made matters worse. She refused to cover for him with his CO or to clean up his messes. When she stood up to him, he balked. Apologized. Promised to reform. And never did.
Burning For Nero (SEALs Going Hot) Page 5