The SEAL's Second Chance: An Alpha Ops Novella

by Anne Calhoun

  Context. Context was everything. She meant it when it came to education, a career, the game. But love?

  She had to find out, and she knew exactly where to do that. “No curfew tonight,” she said to her players, and watched them brighten a little. “Be smart. I’ll see you all in school on Monday.”

  * * *

  She drove through the summer night to the basketball court. Jamie wasn’t there. No surprise. From snippets of conversation she overheard earlier in the night, his family had organized an after-banquet reception at their house. She parked her car, slipped off her heels, and scrabbled for the basketball that was always rolling around in the backseat. Dribbling slowly, she walked to the center of the court and looked up the Hill, where Jamie’s house clung to the edge. Maybe it was her imagination, but she could hear laughter and music over the crickets and the thump of someone’s bass music from deeper into the East Side.

  With the basketball balanced against her hip, she looked around the court. For more than half her life, the basketball court had defined her, given her the scaffolding to create a life for herself. A future. When she moved back to Lancaster, she thought it was time to put her playing days behind her so she could teach a new generation of young women about the game, and life.

  Was she wrong?

  There was only one way to find out.

  Ball in hand, she took off running across the court, into the crabgrass on the other side, then onto the sidewalk leading to the stairs up the Hill. Her dress flashed a deep, secret pink in the enormous, overgrown rhododendrons lining the stairs. Leaves brushed her bare arms, raising goose bumps, but she didn’t stop to think, just kept going, taking the stairs two at a time, her feet thumping against the wooden boards as she climbed higher and higher. Gasping, she stumbled out onto a wooden path between two privacy fences, then emerged into the street. Cars lined the cul-de-sac and the road leading into the neighborhood ranging down the gently sloping west side of the Hill.

  The neighborhood no longer looked imposing, secretive, closed-off. Charlie mentally added running those stairs to her training plan for the girls. The rigor of climbing the stairs, then running down the Hill would build leg muscles to last a forty-eight-minute game, and break down any mental barriers between the East Side and the Hill.

  After she caught her breath, she tucked the ball between her wrist and hip, walked along the sidewalk to Jamie’s front door and rang the bell. Ian opened the door, wearing his suit pants and white shirt, his tie loosened, a beer in one hand. His eyes widened ever so slightly. “Charlie,” he said.

  She could hear conversation and laughter, music playing in the background. For a moment the stranger-in-a-strange-land sensation swamped her. She wished she’d thought to put her shoes back on. “Hi, Ian.”

  “Come on in.” He stepped back and gestured into the house.

  “I just want to talk to Jamie,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Look, Stannard, help me out here. My mother will hand me my ass if I leave a guest on the front porch,” he said.

  She stepped into the foyer, trying not to gawk.

  “About what you saw at the Met,” he started.

  “I didn’t see anything,” she said firmly.

  “It’s not personal. I can’t say anything more than that, but believe me when I say I’ve got nothing going with Eve.”

  She put “not personal” together with “can’t say anything more” and came up with Ian’s job. “I know Eve, so I have no trouble believing that,” she said, and got a huffed laugh from Ian.

  “Who is it?”

  “Hi, Mayor Hawthorn.” She couldn’t stop her spine from straightening or her dirty bare feet from curling away from the carpet covering the foyer’s marble tile as Jamie and Ian’s father stepped into the hallway.

  “Coach Stannard,” he said. “Great job with the girls this season.”

  “Thank you, sir. They worked really hard.”

  “Good coaches inspire that,” he said. “Come in. We’ve got a few friends over, some of the booster club members.”

  “I can’t stay,” she said. “I just wanted to see if Jamie—…”

  “You wanted to see if Jamie could come out and play?” Ian interrupted, amusement dancing in his eyes.

  Clinging to what remained of her dignity, she shot him a glare. “Would you get him for me, please?”

  “Jamie!” Ian bellowed. “It’s for you!”

  “Oh my God,” Charlie said under her breath.

  No answer. She doubted Jamie could hear Ian over the music and laughter, but she wasn’t going to wait anymore. Without asking Ian for permission, she squared up her shoulders and walked down the hall, toward that noise and laughter.

  At least thirty people were clustered in the rooms that spanned the back of the house, kitchen, eating area, a wet bar, a sunken living room. She’d played in front of tens of thousands, but walking in on all the people still dressed in their banquet attire, glittering and pretty and polished, reflected in the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the garden, was the most frightening crowd she’d ever played in front of. And she was playing a game that would break her heart if she lost.

  Jamie, his mother, and several people she didn’t recognize were standing in a cluster by the big granite-topped island. Her heart stopped. He was still in uniform, the jacket buttoned all the way to his neck, and he looked like he’d walked out of her dreams. But his gaze was wary, guarded, and in that moment all the fight drained right out of her. She’d been fighting the wrong thing. It was time to end this, to let him in, to love him with all her heart.

  “Charlie,” he said, sizing her up—her bare feet, her dress, the ball under her arm—and not coming up with anything that made sense. “What can I do for you?”

  “I owe you a game,” she said.

  His expression didn’t change. “And you want to play that game now.”

  She nodded, distantly aware of people watching them, then discreetly moving away, picking up loose threads of conversations.

  “You either bring the best game you’ve got, or we don’t play.”

  “From here on out,” she said, intensely, because this was the moment when she won Jamie’s heart or lost everything. Anything that happened on the court was icing. “My best game. Always.”

  Jamie stared at her, eyes narrowed, jaw set, then put his beer on the island and followed her back down the hall to the front door.

  “Where are your shoes?” he asked as they walked into the spring night. Crickets, a hint of chill to the air, stars soaring overhead.

  “In my car. By the court.”

  They walked through the night to the path leading to the stairs, Charlie padding briskly down them, Jamie hard on her heels. The wanting was still there, sharpened to a keen edge by fear and hope. Jamie stopped across from her, the basket at his back, and put his hands on his hips.

  “You’re going to play me barefoot,” he said, but he wasn’t asking.

  She dribbled the ball from her right hand to her left, a loose, easy crossover, back in her element, confident. “It won’t matter,” she said. “You’re going down. Hard.”

  He snorted, then looked at her, still wary. “What are we playing for?”

  She took a deep breath. The air was cooler down by the river, sharp and sweet in her lungs, raising goose bumps on her upper arms, or maybe that was Jamie, handsome and strong and true in his dress uniform. “One on one. If you win, we give it a shot. A relationship. Long distance.”

  “And if you win?”

  Her heart was pounding high in her throat, scarily out of place. Nerves like she hadn’t felt other than in championship games. Real ones. To cover the nerves, she shot the ball at him with a hard chest pass. “We give it a shot.”

  Hope flickered in his eyes as he caught it automatically, not even flinching. “So we’re competing for the same thing.”

  “Exactly,” she said, then swallowed hard. “We’re competing for us. Fighting for us. That’s what I want.
Do you still want it?”

  He shot the ball back to her, just as hard. “When will you get it through your thick head that I’ll never stop wanting you?”

  Her hands stung from the impact of the ball. Her eyes stung from the impact of his words. “Jamie. I’m not—”

  “Worth fighting for? The fuck you aren’t. The fuck you aren’t. I love you driven, angry, intense. I love that you fouled out of more games than anyone else on any team you’ve ever played on. I love that you don’t play safe, that you leave it all on the court, take the elbows and shoulders and give them right back. I love that you fight for your students as fiercely as you fought for yourself. All I want is to fight at your side.”

  The ball dropped to the cement as she covered her face with her hands, emotion tightening her throat, tears welling in her eyes. He wrapped one arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, then wrapped the other around her waist for good measure. “Shh,” he said as she tipped her face into his shoulder. “I’ve got you.”

  “No” she said, wriggling her shoulders until he let her go. “We play for it,” she said, swiping at her eyes, then looked around the court, cocooned in the deep spring twilight, and knew he understood exactly what she meant.

  “Bring it, Stannard,” he said.

  Hands on her hips, she walked to half-court, barefoot, still in her dress, but he was wearing shiny lace-up shoes that wouldn’t grip the cement any better and the uniform was too beautifully tailored to allow for great mobility. He checked the ball to her, and she drove toward him, holding nothing back, using shoulders and hips to make him give ground, give ground, or foul her. He crowded close, forcing her to fight for every inch of the court. Suddenly she switched to a frontal assault, low to the ground, dribbling with her right, then her left, then her right again, the crossovers slow and easy to follow, waiting for him to let down his guard.

  He did. She feinted right. He bought it, committing his weight, a steal all but his when she bounced a wicked crossover, and left him stumbling over his own feet. Two big steps, one soaring jump, her skirt flashing vibrant and raw in the streetlight, and she kissed the ball against the backboard for an easy two.

  Jamie’s laughter tumbled into the air. When she turned around, he was standing where she’d left him, hands on his hips, eyes gleaming with love, admiration, delight.

  “Boom,” he said. “That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “All night long,” she said in her best trash-talking voice as she dribbled back to the top of the key. “I will own you all night long. You’re going to lose, Hawthorn.”

  He chuckled again, rich and full, and walked right up to her, wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her in. “As long as we’re playing together, I’ve already won.”

  Welcome to Eye Candy, the East Side’s hottest nightclub where the bartenders are hot, the cocktails are fancy, and danger lurks just under the surface …

  READ ON FOR A PREVIEW OF UNDER THE SURFACE!

  ONE

  Sex on a stick, Lord, that’s all I need … walking, talking sex on a stick. If he can mix a decent drink, so much the better.

  Eve Webber shifted two boxes of limes to the far end of the bar and considered apologizing to the Almighty for making the risqué request. Not a single lesson in eighteen years of Sunday school covered petitioning the Lord for a good-looking man. But with a location on the edge of Lancaster’s struggling East Side and nine people depending on her for their paychecks, Eye Candy’s success depended heavily on gorgeous male bartenders who lived up to the bar’s provocative name. She’d take all the help she could get.

  “Drop dead sexy, knowledgeable, with just a smidgen of honor. That’s all I need,” she muttered.

  She picked up her iPhone and scanned for chatter on Facebook and Twitter. A couple of posts from women in her target market, young professionals, about meeting up at Eye Candy after work, which was very welcome news. She replied, tweeted her drink specials, then set the phone in the portable speaker unit for background music while she finished prepping the bar for the evening rush.

  The heavy steel door swung open. She looked up from the limes and saw a lean figure silhouetted in a rectangle of thick August sunlight that cloaked his head and shoulders, shrouding his face.

  “Chad Henderson?” she said, and if her voice was a little breathier than usual, well, he’d caught her off guard.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The two words ran together, automatic yet without a hint of deference, not a drawled opening to flirtation. “Come on in,” she called, consciously steadying her voice.

  She moved out from behind the bar to meet him. He didn’t offer any of the small talk applicants often used to connect with her, so she leaned against the end of the bar and watched him scrutinize Eye Candy’s interior as he wove his way through the tables toward her. The walls were black-painted cinderblock, and tables and stools surrounded the oak-parquet dance floor on three sides; her DJ’s booth comprised the fourth side and backed one short wall of the rectangular room. The solid oak, custom-crafted bar she’d purchased for a pittance at a bankruptcy auction ran along the other short end of the rectangular room. The place was empty and echoing now, but in three hours couples would pack the dance floor and every table would be occupied.

  Chad stopped in front of her and slid the earpiece of his Revo sunglasses into the V of his shirt, exposing surprisingly hard ridges of pectoral muscle, given his lean frame.

  “Eve Webber. I own Eye Candy.” She offered her hand and got a firm grip in return as she took inventory. Maybe six feet tall, because her heels brought her to five ten and their eyes were just level. He wore running shoes, faded jeans too loose to draw attention to anything underneath, and a dark green button-down with the top two buttons undone. Reddish-brown hair long enough to show finger-combing ridges curled at his ears and shirt collar, and hazel eyes met Eve’s assessing look without a hint of expression.

  “Thanks for the interview.”

  Definitely not anxious, or eager, or any of the other adjectives normally used to describe a job applicant in a tough economy, but she liked the cool confidence. It made him very watchable. Some women liked to flirt openly with a sexy-yet-safe bad boy. Others wanted to watch, and wonder. He wasn’t exactly sex on a stick, but if he had any skill behind a bar at all, Chad would round out the eye candy quite nicely.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” she said as she leaned against the bar and gestured to one of the bar stools.

  He braced himself against the stool and crossed his legs at the ankle, effectively trapping her between his body and the bar. After another glance at her, one that seemed to take in every detail of her face and body, he folded his arms across his chest and scanned the room again. “Nice setup.”

  “Thanks. I’ve only been open a couple of months but business is good so far.” She’d made a high-stakes bet on a building on the edge of the proposed Riverside Business Park, an urban renewal project due for a vote in the city council in the next few weeks. If it passed, Eve’s lifelong neighborhood on Lancaster’s East Side would get a much-needed influx of money, jobs, and attention.

  She wasn’t going to think about what it would mean to her and the East Side if the vote failed. She’d poured her life savings and a hefty small business loan into the interior. Any hint of insolvency and her family would pounce on the excuse to send her back to a desk job.

  The way Chad blocked her in left no other option than to use the heel of her boot to hitch herself onto the stool next to his. She crossed her legs, and his gaze flickered over their length, displayed to their best advantage in the short skirt slit to the top of her thigh. His gaze slowly returned to her face, and when that green-brown gaze met hers, she felt a heady charge flicker across her skin.

  “Tell me about your experience,” she said, trying to focus because each second of silence amped up the current crackling between them.

  “I’m at Gino’s.”

  Not good. A neighborhood bar south o
f downtown, Gino’s was a cop hangout, a laid-back, low-energy, peanut-shells-on-the-floor-ESPN-on-the-TV kind of place, where local law enforcement went to unwind, not raise hell. As bars went, it was about as far from Eye Candy’s high-energy dance club vibe as possible.

  “Why leave? Getting beers for cops is much easier than mixing hundreds of cocktails a night.”

  “I need full-time hours.” He looked around again. “And better tips.”

  “This isn’t Gino’s. Not by a long shot,” she said. “You’ll work for your tips here.”

  She didn’t mean to infuse a sexual overtone into that comment, but somehow the insinuation hung between them. His eyes darkened from hazel to mossy green and a hint of color stained his cheekbones. Okay, they had chemistry, that heart-pounding, shallow-breathing feeling that meant the pheromones were surging.

  Chemistry with you means chemistry with customers, she thought firmly. Watching him work would tell her all she needed to know. “Feel up to making me something?” she asked lightly.

  “Mojito? Cosmo? Cum in a Hot Tub?”

  He got points for naming her three most popular cocktails, in order no less, and major points for including the last one without a hint of innuendo in his face or voice. “Let’s try a Cosmo,” she said.

  He moved past her, close enough that she felt the soft denim of his jeans brush against her bare thigh, then strolled behind the bar, found the Absolut, the Triple Sec, and the juices, and measured all the ingredients over ice scooped into a metal shaker, his movements precise. A couple of deft twists of his wrist, then he poured the drink into a chilled glass snagged from the fridge under the bar.

  “I haven’t sliced the oranges yet,” she said when he scanned the half-filled tubs of garnishes.

  He set the drink on a napkin in front of her, offering it to her with the stem between his index and middle fingers to avoid leaving prints on the glass. She sipped as he splashed the shaker through the wash, rinse, and sanitize sinks, then set it on a towel to dry. His ease in his body boded well for someone who’d spend eight-plus hours a night on his feet, handling glass and premium liquor.