Text copyright ©2016 by the Author.
This work was made possible by a special license through the Kindle Worlds publishing program and has not necessarily been reviewed by Marina Adair. All characters, scenes, events, plots and related elements appearing in the original St. Helena Vineyard Series remain the exclusive copyrighted and/or trademarked property of Marina Adair, or their affiliates or licensors.
For more information on Kindle Worlds: http://www.amazon.com/kindleworlds
Love Me Tender,
Love You Hard
Sharon Hamilton
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the St. Helena Vineyard’s Kindle World, where romance is waiting to be uncorked and authors from around the globe are invited to share their own stories of love and happily ever after. Set in the heart of wine country, this quaint town and its cast of quirky characters were the inspiration behind my St Helena Vineyard series, and the Hallmark Channel movie, AUTUMN IN THE VINEYARD. I want to thank these incredible authors for spending time in St. Helena, and all of you readers who are adventurous enough to take the journey with us.
I hope you enjoy your time here as much as we have.
Warmly,
Marina Adair
Sharon Hamilton’s Book List
SEAL Brotherhood
SEAL Encounter (Book .5)
Accidental SEAL (Book 1)
SEAL Endeavor (Book 1.5)
Fallen SEAL Legacy (Book 2)
SEAL Under Covers (Book 3)
SEAL The Deal (Book 4)
Cruisin’ For A SEAL (Book 5)
SEAL My Destiny (Book 6)
SEAL Of My Heart (Book 7)
Bad Boys of SEAL Team 3
SEAL’s Promise (Book 1)
SEAL My Home (Book 2)
SEAL’s Code (Book 3)
Band of Bachelors
Lucas (Book 1)
Alex (Book 2)
True Blue SEALs
True Navy Blue (prequel to Zak)
Zak
Nashville SEAL
Nashville SEAL (Book 1)
Jameson (Book 2)
Fredo
Fredo’s Secret (novella) Book 1
Fredo’s Dream (Coming Soon) Book 2
Novellas
SEAL Encounter
SEAL Endeavor
True Navy Blue (prequel to Zak)
Fredo’s Secret
Nashville SEAL
Golden Vampires of Tuscany
Honeymoon Bite (Book 1)
Mortal Bite (Book 2)
The Guardians
Heavenly Lover (Book 1)
Underworld Lover (Book 2)
Underworld Queen (Book 3)
Author’s Note
I always dedicate my SEAL books to the brave men and women who defend our shores and keep us safe. Without their sacrifice, and that of their families—because a warrior’s fight always includes his or her family—I wouldn’t have the freedom and opportunity to make a living writing these stories. They sometimes pay the ultimate price so we can debate, argue, go have coffee with friends, raise our children and see them have children of their own.
One of my favorite tributes to warriors resides on many memorials, including one I saw honoring the fallen of WWII on an island in the Pacific:
“When you go home
Tell them of us, and say
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.”
These are my stories created out of my own imagination. Anything that is inaccurately portrayed is either my mistake, or done intentionally to disguise something I might have overheard over a beer or in the corner of one of the hangouts along the Coronado Strand.
I support two main charities: Navy SEAL/UDT Museum in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Please learn about this wonderful museum, all run by active and former SEALs and their friends and families, and who rely on public support, not that of the U.S. Government.
www.navysealmuseum.org
I also support Wounded Warriors, who tirelessly bring together the warrior as well as the family members who are just learning to deal with their soldier’s condition and have nowhere to turn. It is a long path to becoming well, but I’ve seen first-hand what this organization does for its warriors and the families who love them. Please give what your heart tells you is right. If you cannot give, volunteer at one of the many service centers all over the United States. Get involved. Do something meaningful for someone who gave so much of themselves, to families who have paid the price for your freedom. You’ll find a family there unlike any other on the planet.
www.woundedwarriorproject.org
Table of Contents
Sharon Hamilton’s Book List
Author’s Note
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
About the Author
Series Overview
Reviews
CHAPTER 1
FORMER SEAL DEREK FARLEY was having a bad week. The call at midnight rattled him more than he wanted to admit. He thought he was all over Remy. But when his friend said she was spotted in a white uniform in St. Helena. It got his mind going. He couldn’t get past the idea of what she might look like all dressed up like a gothic nurse—her hair mussed like they’d just tussled in the sheets. It scared him how much he missed her. How he thought about her nearly twenty-four-seven. Not that he’d admit it to anyone, especially Knudsen, his former teammate from SEAL Team 5.
He thought the dreams and fantasies would subside now that sixty days had gone by.
He was dead wrong.
No way Remington Bolt would become a nurse, he’d said over the phone.
“Well,” Knudsen began in his mock southern drawl, “She was definitely in white. And she wasn’t a bride, if that’s what you are worried about.” Knudsen sent his comment with a low growl.
Derek winced. “I’m not worried about that,” he lied.
“Sure. Well, I just thought you ought to know. You were wondering where she took off to.”
He never should have brought it up, and now Knudsen wasn’t convinced of his lack of interest. The guy had to know he’d been trying. Really trying to get her out of his mind, but she was there, and no amount of eye or brain bleach would remove it. All he could think about was Remington and the way she held a semi-automatic. How those fingers slid over the shaft of his long guns as she fondled them the way she had no right to. How she looked in the shower, her backside all silky and wet, that little come on in twinkle in her eye as she sucked a finger and showed him right where he should focus.
He even loved perusing her body while she made him breakfast, as she liked to do naked on those long lazy mornings in San Diego. Sometimes he wouldn’t let her finish, and so he’d eaten a lot of cold breakfasts over the months they were together.
One by one the days whirled before his eyes, images of times before his last deployment and injury recovery, times when he used to laugh a lot. Well, maybe not a lot, but a whole lot more than he did these days, drunk or sober. Any one of those sexy images were ripe for the cover of a men’s health magazine and could qualify as a Viagra alternative. He’d been lonely these past sixty days, but he’d been hard as a rock, too.
“Derek, you still there buddy?” Knudsen’s voice crackled and forced Derek’s brain through the sieve of reality he called “Missing Remy.” Except he didn
’t dare call it that to anyone. Not even to himself.
From the reality of his cold, lonely bed in his tiny apartment that was even more tiny since she’d left, the postage stamp view of the ocean now unremarkable, he mumbled, trying to biff off the stiffy that defied him still. “So where did you say you spotted her?” His voice croaked just like in high school when he couldn’t speak around pretty girls. If the pressure between his legs didn’t stop, he’d have to roll over on himself or dump a glass of water on his crotch.
“At Picker’s. She was fondling melons, and, well, Derek, that was one helluva—”
“Shut the fuck up.” It was none of his business what Remington looked like holding cantaloupes in her palms. He knew full well what her own enormous melons looked like, tasted like in the flesh. That was part of the problem. And it didn’t help his concentration, but rather sent it directly south. What he’d done with those melons on hundreds of occasions defied logic and the laws of space and time. Now he’d never get back to bed. He had to get rid of Knudsen before he’d do or say something he’d regret.
“Well, Remington has her future ahead of her, and I have mine. But thanks for telling me. Next time, don’t call me at midnight.”
“Sure, Derek. So, we got another thirty days before we start workup. San Diego’s cool, but up here? You’d love it. When are you gonna join me? We’d have a blast. Town’s nice. Girls are pretty, although not a lot of them, not like San Diego. You could make it look like you weren’t spying on her.”
Derek hadn’t told anyone about being dumped from the Teams. There would be no workup for him. He’d need to have that conversation soon with Knudsen. Maybe today.
But his main objection right now was he didn’t want to admit he’d been to St. Helena before. With Remington. A nice, very nice weekend there at a bed and breakfast. But for them, it was mostly just the bed part that mattered.
He didn’t have to see Knudsen’s face. He could feel the former Teammate’s smile and suspected his teeth still had remnants of dinner stuffed between their pearly rows. Horse teeth. Knudsen and his whole family had big, white horse teeth as hard and big as a real horse. He wondered how he ever kissed a girl without those teeth getting in the way.
Derek was stalling for the answer he didn’t want to give, but knew he would.
Oh shit, here it comes. He felt the constriction in his chest, his stomach, and yes, in his balls.
His mind manufactured the long, painful piercing scream from the House of Horrors, and Derek knew Knudsen was enjoying the moment tremendously. They’d spent so much time together in combat, they knew each other’s inner secrets and thoughts just as if they were married, except neither of them were. Both confirmed bachelors, talk was cheap and stories were honest when you were waiting for action and preparing to meet your maker in a country you didn’t even like. Giving his life away for pennies.
Not that it made any difference. Being dead was being dead. Didn’t mean Jack what your bank account had in it if you were dead.
But something about Remington going on and having a life without him really disturbed him. His head screamed like the first and only time he’d been to a heavy metal concert. It wasn’t his ears that would ring, it was his heart that felt like it had been tied up in barbed wire, and hung by a meat hook, along with a pair of old tennis shoes thrown over the telephone wire down by the only stop sign in his home town of Deganville.
Sonofabitch.
“Talk to me, Derek. I’m a good listener.”
Well wasn’t that special? Now Knudsen sounded like a goddamned counselor, one of those the Navy sent him to now that they’d dropped him from the Teams.
“I’m thinking,” he said, stalling for time.
Knudsen chuckled, and then rubbed it in really good, just for effect, “Well, you know what you always told me. Thinking’s a luxury in the war zone. If you gotta think, your training sucked.”
“Except this is no fucking war zone. Would you quit it and let me just take a moment?”
“And her training sucked. Sucked you good.”
“Fuck you.”
“Sure, man.”
Derek knew Knudsen was beginning to show restraint. He didn’t sigh all pissy like he wanted to. He waited. The guy knew him well. Derek took a deep breath and held it as long as he could, exhaling long and slow without making a sound. It began to work.
It was hard to hate her, but he told himself he did. After all, he’d not been a saint either, but she’d partied all night with his other best friend, now his ex-best friend, and a newbie guy on one of the other SEAL teams. It was the night before Ray’s first deployment. She called it a send off. He could imagine what kind of a sendoff she gave the little frog all right. Ray was probably still dreaming about her—licking his lips and fondling himself.
Just like Derek was.
Against his better judgment, he continued to pump Knudsen with questions about her, avoiding the invite which still hung heavy in the air. But Knudsen didn’t have any other information. It was just some chance encounter at a gourmet supermarket in that beautiful little small town. She probably had the regulars drooling red wine all over their overalls up there.
With those long legs of hers and the way she could ride a pole in his private fantasies, just like she had a couple of times when they’d gotten sufficiently drunk and crashed a strip joint, she was impossible to forget. That one night she took tips, daring him to steal her off the stage and take her home.
And that’s exactly what he did. She giggled and moaned all night long. God, those were the good days. Those were some fantastic days.
“So how come you were—are—up in St Helena?” he said as he desperately tried to clear his head of the visions. It was the only question he had left in his quiver.
“Family’s got friends, the Baudouins. One of the grandsons was a buddy of mine in San Diego for a spell. Former Ranger and a good solid guy. Family owns a vineyard here. I’m picking up a few cases for my cousin’s wedding.”
“Good for Cassie. When do you come back down to San Diego?”
“I’m staying over tomorrow and at least through the weekend, maybe a couple of days longer. You miss me? I thought you missed Remington.”
“Come on, Knudsen. Get your boot out of my ass. Besides, I didn’t tell you the news?”
“What news?”
“Just got the notice this week. They gave me the medical. I’m out.”
“No fuckin’ way. You gotta be kidding me.”
“Swear to God. Swear to St. Frog in a leakin’ boat. They did it.”
“Don’t take our saintly Lord in vain, Derek. This is no laughing matter.”
“Tell me about it. You think I’m laughing?”
“Seriously, Derek, what are you going to do?”
That was a very good question. It had been the other thing he’d thought about nearly twenty-four-seven. Now that he had the time to spend with Remington, one of her big objections before she’d taken off, he didn’t have a job, which meant no money and no stability. And that was putting aside—which was impossible to do—what she’d done.
It was an impulse he knew was a mistake the instant it flashed into his head. Later, he would attribute it to his lower reptilian lily pad pre-mammalian origins harkening back to an early ancestor with no brains but reaction times off the charts.
“If you’re sure you’ll stay put for a few, I guess I’ll come on up there and keep you out of trouble and hopefully find myself some in the meantime.”
He was hoping it wouldn’t be just some trouble. He was hoping it was going to be a lot of trouble.
CHAPTER 2
REMINGTON BOLT TORE open her chef’s jacket as soon as she got back to the tiny apartment above the combination ice cream/candy shop, aptly called the Sugar Shack. Rent in St. Helena was so expensive. It rivaled an apartment she’d subleased in New York one summer when she tried her hand at some modeling. Barely 250 square feet, it had a nice view of the street below, and sweet smells
of fudge, peppermint candy and strong espresso from that screaming machine. She gazed out her window dozens of times every day, overlooking the busy small town street below. St. Helena reminded her of Mendocino or some of the little towns in Cape Cod.
What was she looking for?
Her ample chest rested against her folded arms as she knelt at the single window as if worshiping at the shrine of her life yet to come, leaning over the sill and watching the tourists travel below. The funny-looking strangers always walked with sweaters swung over their shoulders, as if placed ever so casually, in sockless loafers and expensive sunglasses, trying to look like locals. They wore funny straw and canvas hats at odd angles, hiding their eyes and their age. They wouldn’t be caught dead wearing such outfits at home. Locals could never afford to look or dress that way. Nor did they want to.
No, Remy thought as she followed an Express Delivery truck barreling below her second story perch, she knew she was looking for only one body, one huge chest of a man with thighs the size of both hers combined, the guy with arms that could crush her to him so hard, she’d be breathless and gladly asphyxiate under the weight of him. He could fill her body with such exquisite pleasure she was rubber for hours afterwards. Only one man who could hungrily scan her naked body and make her practically come just watching him examine her. Some men were sexier to look at than to sleep with. Some men were better in bed than they looked. Derek Fuckin’ Farley, was one of those men—the only man she’d met—who was both awesome to look at and downright dangerous in bed.
He was the whole package. The bees knees. Every fantasy a healthy red-blooded young woman would ever want, and she’d left it all behind.
Why had she left? She let her fingers lace through her long hair. There was a reason, surely, but she couldn’t think, because right now she felt his kiss on her neck as his hands slowly traced down her spine to the cleft between her butt cheeks, squeezing and separating them and—
Oh gosh, it was no use. She thought getting away would help her be rid of him and the memory of that part-physical and part-religious experience they’d shared. But the rubber band kept stretching, threatening to snap her back into his bed, wherever he was. She’d do anything to be there, underneath him, making him sweat, making him work hard to smooth out every sinew and muscle in her body until she was putty and the sheets were soaking wet.
St. Helena Vineyard Series: Love Me Tender, Love You Hard (Kindle Worlds Novella) (Cookin' With SEALs Book 1) Page 1