Suzanne Brockmann - Team Ten 10 - Taylor's Temptation

by Suzanne Brockmann

  Bobby and Wes had been virtually inseparable for nearly eleven years—even though they'd hated each other's guts at the outset of BUD/S training, when they'd been assigned together as swim buddies. That was something not many people knew. But Wes had earned Bobby's respect through the grueling training sessions—the same way Bobby earned Wes's. It took them a while, but once they recognized that they were made from the same unbreakable fabric, they'd started working together.

  It was a case of one plus one equaling three. As a team, they were unstoppable. And so they became allies.

  And when Wes's little brother Ethan had died, they'd taken their partnership a step forward and become friends. Real friends. Over the past decade that bond had strengthened to the point where it seemed indestructible.

  But years of working with explosives had taught Bobby that indestructibility was a myth. There was no such thing,

  And there was a very good chance that over the next few minutes, he was going to destroy ten years of friendship with just a few small words.

  I slept with your sister.

  "Hey," Wes said in greeting. "You look tired."

  Bobby shrugged. "I'm okay. You?"

  Wes pushed himself off the wall. "Please tell me you didn't check your luggage."

  They started walking, following the stream of humanity away from the gate. "I didn't. I didn't bring it. There was no time to go back to the hotel. I just left it there."

  "Bummer," Wes said. "Paying for a room when you don't even sleep there. That's pretty stupid."

  "Yeah," Bobby agreed. I slept with your sister. How the hell was he supposed to say something like that? Just blurting it out seemed wrong, and yet there was no real graceful way to lead into a topic like that.

  "How's Colleen?" Wes asked.

  "She's—" Bobby hesitated. Beautiful. Heart-stoppingly sexy. Great in bed. Maybe carrying his baby. "Doing okay. Selling the car wasn't easy for her."

  "Jeez, I can't believe she did that. Her Mustang... That's like selling a child."

  "She got a good price. The buyer was a collector, and she was sure he'd take good care of it."

  Wes pushed open a door that led toward the parking area. "Still..."

  "Did Jake fill you in on the situation with this Tulgerian orphanage Colleen and her friends have been trying to move out of the war zone?" Bobby asked.

  "Yeah, apparently the building was hit in some kind of skirmish a day or so ago. The place was pretty much destroyed, and the survivors were brought to a local hospital—but the place doesn't even have electricity or running water. We'll be going out there pretty much upon insertion in Tulgeria to move the kids back into the city."

  "Good," Bobby said. "I'm glad the admiral's made that a priority. Wes, there's something you need to know..." The easy stuff first. “The little girl that Colleen was hoping to adopt was killed in that air strike."

  Wes stared at him in the shadowy dimness of the parking garage. "Adopt?" he said, loud enough that his voice echoed. "She was going to adopt a kid? What, was she nuts? She's just a kid herself."

  "No, she's not," Bobby said quietly. "She's a grown woman. And—" okay, here's where he had to say it "—I

  should know. I've...uh, been with her, Wes. Colleen. And me."

  Wes stopped walking. "Aw, come on, Bobby, you can do better than that. You've been with her? You could say slept with, but of course you didn't sleep much, did you, dirt wad? How about..." He used the crudest possible expression. "Yeah, that works. That's what you did, huh? You son of a..." He was shouting now.

  Bobby stood there. Stunned. Wes had known. Somehow he'd already known. And Bobby had been too self-absorbed to realize it.

  "I sent you there to take care of her," Wes continued. "And this is what you do? How could you do this to me?"

  "It wasn't about you," Bobby tried to explain. "It was about me and— Wes, I've been crazy about her for years."

  "Oh, this is fine," Wes had gone beyond full volume and into overload. "For years, and this is the first I hear of it? What, were you just waiting for a chance to get her alone, scumbag?" He shoved Bobby, both hands against his chest.

  Bobby let himself get shoved. He could have planted himself and absorbed it, but he didn't. "No. Believe me I tried to stay away from her, but...I couldn't do it. As weird as it sounds, she got it into her head that she wanted me, and hell, you know how she gets. I didn't stand a chance."

  Wes was in his face. "You're ten years older than she is, and you're trying to tell me that she seduced you?"

  "It's not that simple. You've got to believe—" Bobby cut himself off. "Look, you're right. It is my fault. I'm more experienced. She offered, and God, I wanted her, and I didn't do the right thing. For you."

  "Ho, that's great!" Wes was pacing now, a tightly wound bundle of energy, ready to blow. "Meaning you did the right thing for Colleen, is that what you're saying? How right is it, Bobby, that she sits around and waits for you,

  that she'll have half a life, pretending to be okay, but really terrified, just waiting to get word that something's happened to you? And say you don't get your head blown off on some op. Say you do make it home. Retire from the teams in a few years. Then what? How right is it that she's the one who makes more money working as a lawyer? How's she supposed to have kids? Put 'em in day care? That's just great."

  Kids...day care... Bobby was shocked. "Wes, whoa, I'm not going to marry her."

  Wes stopped short, turning to stare with his mouth open, as if Bobby'd just announced his plan to detonate a nuclear warhead over New York City. "Then what the hell were you doing with her, dirt wad?"

  Bobby shook his head, laughing slightly in disbelief. "Come on. She's twenty-three. She's just experimenting. She doesn't want to marry me."

  In hindsight, it was probably the laughter that did it.

  Wes exploded. "You son of a bitch. You went into this with completely dishonorable intentions!" He put his shoulder into a solid right jab, right in Bobby's face.

  Bobby saw it coming. He didn't dodge it or block it. He just stood there, turning his head only slightly to deflect the force of the blow. It rocked him back on his heels, but he quickly regained his balance.

  "Wes, don't do this." There were people around. Getting into and out of cars. It wouldn't be long until someone called a security team, who would call the police, who would haul their butts to jail.

  Wes hit him again, harder this time, an ear-ringing blow, and again Bobby didn't defend himself.

  "Fight back, you bastard," Wes snarled.

  "No."

  "Damn it!" Wes launched himself at Bobby, hitting him in the exact place that would knock him over, take him

  down onto his back on the concrete. After years of training together, Wes knew his weak spots well.

  "Hey!" The shout echoed against the concrete ceilings and walls as Wes hit him with a flurry of punches. "Hey, Skelly, back off!"

  The voice belonged to Lucky O'Donlon. An SUV pulled up with a screech of tires, and O'Donlon and Crash Haw-ken were suddenly there, in the airport parking garage, pulling Wes off him.

  And the three newest members of Alpha Squad, Rio Ro-setti, Mike Lee and Thomas King climbed out of the back, helping Bobby to his feet.

  "You okay, Chief?" Rio asked, his Italian street-punk attitude completely overridden by wide-eyed concern. The kid had some kind of hero worship thing going for both Bobby and Wes. If this little altercation didn't cure him of it forever, Bobby didn't know what would.

  He nodded at Rio. "Yeah." His nose was bleeding. By some miracle it wasn't broken. It should have been. Wes had hit him hard enough.

  "Here, Chief." Mike handed him a handkerchief.

  "Thanks."

  Crash and Lucky were both holding on tightly to Wes, who was sputtering—and ready to go another round if they released him.

  "You want to explain what this is all about?" Crash was the senior officer present. He rarely used his officer voice-he rarely spoke at all—but when he did, he was ob
eyed instantly. To put it mildly.

  But Wes wouldn't have listened to the president of the United States at this moment, and Bobby didn't want to explain any of this to anyone. "No, sir," he said stiffly, politely. "With all due respect, sir..."

  "We got a call from your sister, Skelly," Lucky O'Donlon said. "She was adamant we follow you down

  here to the airport. She said she had good reason to believe you were going to try to kick the hell out of Taylor, here, and she didn't want either of you guys to get arrested."

  "Did she say why I was going to kick the hell out of Taylor?" Wes asked. "Did she tell you what that good reason was?"

  It was obvious she hadn't.

  Bobby took a step toward Wes. "What we were discussing is not public information. Show some respect to your sister."

  Wes laughed in his face, looked up at Crash and Lucky. "You guys know what this friend of mine did?"

  Bobby got large. "This is between you and me, Skelly. So help me God, if you breathe a single word of—"

  Wes breathed four words. He told them all, quite loudly, in the foulest possible language what Bobby had done with his sister. "Apparently, she's doing some experimenting these days. All you have to do is go to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and look her up. Colleen Skelly. She's probably in the phone book. Anyone else want to give her a go?"

  Wes Skelly was a dead man.

  Bobby jumped on top of him with a roar. The hell with the fact that Wes was being held in place by Lucky and Crash. The hell with everything. No one had the right to talk about Colleen that way. No one.

  He hit Wes in the face, harder than he'd ever hit him before, then he tackled him. It was enough to take them down to the concrete—Lucky and Crash with them.

  He hit Wes again, wanting to make him bleed.

  The other SEALs were on top of him then, grabbing his back and his arms, trying to pull him away, but they couldn't stop him. No one could stop him. Bobby yanked Wes up by the front of his shirt as he got to his feet, hauling him away from Lucky and Crash, with Rio, Mike and Thomas clinging to him like monkeys.

  He pulled back his arm, ready to throw another brain-shaking punch when another voice, a new voice, rang out.

  "Stop this. Right. Now"

  It was the senior chief.

  Another truck had pulled up.

  Bobby froze, and that was all the other SEALs needed. Lucky and Crash pulled Wes out of his grip and safely out of range, and then, God, Senior Chief Harvard Becker was there, standing in between him and Wes.

  "Thank you for coming, Senior," Crash said quietly. He looked at Bobby. "I answered the phone when Colleen called. She didn't say as much, but I correctly guessed the cause of the, uh, tension between you and Skelly. I anticipated that the senior's presence would be helpful."

  Wes's nose was broken, and as Bobby watched—not without some grim satisfaction—he leaned forward slightly, his face averted as he bled onto the concrete floor.

  Lucky stepped closer to Harvard. He was speaking to him quietly, no doubt filling him in. Telling him that Bobby slept with Wes's sister.

  God, this was so unfair to Colleen. She was going to Tulgeria with this very group of men. Who would all look at her differently, knowing that she and Bobby had...

  Damn it, why couldn't Wes have agreed to talk this problem out...privately? Why had he turned this into a fist fight and, as a result, made Bobby's intimate relationship with Colleen public knowledge?

  "So what do you want to do?" Harvard asked, hands on his hips as he looked from Bobby to Wes, his shaved head gleaming in the dim garage light. "You children want to move this somewhere so you can continue to beat the hell out of each other? Or you want to pretend to be grown-ups for a change and try working this out with a conversation?"

  "Colleen doesn't sleep around," Bobby said, looking at Wes, willing him to meet his gaze. But Wes didn't look

  up, so he turned back to Harvard. "If he implies that again, Senior—or anything else even remotely disrespectful—I'll rip his head off." He used Wes's favorite adjective for emphasis.

  Harvard nodded, his dark eyes narrowing slightly as he looked at Bobby. "Okay." He turned to Wes. "You hear that, Chief Skelly? Do you understand what this man is saying to you?"

  "Yeah," Wes answered sullenly. "He'll rip my head off." He added his favorite adjective, too. "Let him try."

  "No," Harvard said. "Those are the words he used, but the actual semantics—what he really means by saying those words—is that he cares a great deal for your sister. You fools are on the same side here. So what's it going to be? Talk or fight?"

  "Talk," Bobby said.

  "There's nothing to say," Wes countered. "Except from now on he better stay the hell away from her. If he so much as talks to her again, I'll rip his head off."

  "Even if I wanted to do that," Bobby said quietly, "which I don't, I couldn't. I've got to talk to her again. There's more that you need to know, Skelly, but I'm not going to talk about it here in front of everyone."

  Wes looked up, finally meeting Bobby's gaze, horror in his eyes. "Oh, my God," he said. "You got her pregnant."

  "All right," Harvard commanded. "Let's take this someplace private. Taylor, in my truck. Rosetti, take Chief Skelly's keys, drive him to the base and escort him to my office. On the double."

  "You're going to have to marry her."

  Bobby sat back in his chair, his breath all but knocked out of him. "What? Wes, that's insane."

  Wes Skelly sat across the table from him in the conference room on base that Harvard had appropriated and made

  into a temporary office. He was still furious. Bobby had never seen him stay so angry for such a long time.

  It was possible Wes was going to be angry at Bobby forever.

  He leaned forward now, glaring. "What's insane is for you to go all the way to Cambridge to help me and end up messing around with my sister. What's insane is that we're even having this conversation in the first place—that you couldn't keep your pants zipped. You got yourself into this situation. You play the game—you pay when you lose. And you lost big-time, buddy, when that condom broke."

  "And I'm willing to take responsibility if necessary—"

  "If necessary?" Wes laughed. "Now who's insane? You really think Colleen's going to marry you if she has to? No way. Not Colleen. She's too stubborn, too much of an idealist. No, you have to go back to Boston tomorrow morning. First thing. And make her think you want to marry her, Get her to say yes now—before she does one of those home tests. Otherwise, she's going to be knocked up and refusing to take your phone calls. And boy, won't that be fun."

  Bobby shook his head. It was aching, and his face was throbbing where Wes's fists had connected with it—which was just about everywhere. He suspected Wes's nose hurt far worse; yet, both of their physical pain combined was nothing compared to the apprehension that was starting to churn in his stomach. Ask Colleen to marry him. God.

  "She's not going to agree to marry me. She wanted a fling, not a lifetime commitment."

  "Well, too bad for her," Wes countered.

  “Wes, she deserves—'' Bobby rubbed his forehead and just said it "—she deserves better than me."

  "Damn straight she does," Wes agreed. "I wanted her to marry a lawyer or a doctor. I didn't want this for her— to be a Navy wife, like my mother." He swore. "I wanted

  her to hook up with someone rich, not some poor, dumb Navy chief who'll have to work double shifts to buy her a washer and dryer. Damn, if she's going to marry Navy, she should at least have been smart enough to pick an officer."

  This wasn't a surprise. Wes had voiced his wishes for Colleen often enough in the past. The surprise came from how bad Bobby felt hearing this. "I wanted that for her, too," he told Wes quietly.

  "Here's what you do," Wes told him. "You go to Colleen's and you tell her we had a fight. You tell her that I wanted you to stay the hell away from her. You tell her that you told me that you wouldn't—that you want to marry her. And you tell her tha
t I flat-out forbid it." He laughed, but there wasn't any humor in it. "She'll agree to marry you then."

  "She's not going to ruin her life just to tick you off," Bobby argued.

  "Wanna bet?" Wes stood up. "After the meeting I'll get you a seat on the next flight back to Boston."

  "Are you ever going to forgive me?" Bobby asked.

  "No." Wes didn't turn around as he went out the door.

  Chapter

  Colleen came home from the Tulgerian children's memorial service at St. Margaret's to find Ashley home and no new messages on the answering machine. Bobby had called last night, while she was at a Relief Aid meeting, so at least she knew he'd survived his altercation with her brother. Still, she was dying to speak to him.

  Dying to be with him again.

  "Any calls?" she called to Ashley, who was in her room.

  "No."

  "When did you get back?" Colleen asked, going to her roommate's bedroom door and finding her...packing?

  "I'm not back," Ashley said, wiping her eyes and her nose with her sleeve. She had been crying but she forced an overly bright smile. "I'm only here temporarily and I'm not telling you where I'm going because you might tell someone."

  Colleen sighed. "I guess Brad found you."

  "I guess you would be the person who told him where I was...?"

  "I'm sorry, but he seemed sincerely broken up over your disappearing act."

  "You mean broken up over losing his chances to inherit my share of DeWitt and Klein," Ashley countered, savagely throwing clothes into the open suitcase on her bed. "How could you even think I'd consider getting back together with him? My father hired him to be my husband, and he went along with it! Some things are unforgivable."

  "People change when they fall in love."

  "Not that much." She emptied her entire drawer of underwear into the suitcase. "I figured out how to get my father off my back. I'm dropping out of law school."