SEAL's Honor

by Megan Crane

  Everly told herself that the fact that this man happened to be stupidly hot had nothing to do with . . . anything. But her breath seemed to tangle there in her throat regardless. And she knew the reality that he was that attractive was something she was going to have to get over. Or find a way to ignore, anyway.

  Because what mattered far more than how ridiculously good-looking her once-upon-a-time neighbor had become was the unmistakable fact that the man was a loaded gun. A deadly weapon in male form. And she’d never been happier in all her heretofore pacifist life to see that much artillery packed solid and lethal into one obviously capable man.

  Blue didn’t move a single astonishingly hard muscle when she came through the door. But Everly had no illusions that she was sneaking up on him. It was possible he’d known the very moment she’d woken up inside, well before her feet touched the floor. She doubted she’d have managed to sneak up on him if it had been pitch-dark out here, much less when he was as bathed in the strange indigo light as she was.

  She didn’t think he was the kind of man people snuck up on.

  “What happened?” she asked, her voice husky.

  She told herself it was from the unexpected nap. Because that had to be sleep in her throat, not the odd reaction she was having to Blue himself, like something almost uncomfortably fizzy was working its way over her skin and sinking deep beneath it, down into her bones.

  Because her life was already complicated enough.

  He didn’t look up. “You fell asleep. Hard. In a room full of people.”

  There was no reason that should have made her feel so . . . fragile. “Where am I?”

  “If you don’t know where you are, Everly,” Blue said in that gruff voice of his that rolled over her and then shook through her like some kind of thunder, setting off competing storms inside her whether she liked it or not, “then you’re in more trouble than I thought.”

  “I know I’m in Alaska,” she said, as if she expected him to start handing out prizes for the right answers. Like the people-pleasing Miss Goody Two-shoes she’d been her entire life, until a month ago when she’d been recast as a lunatic Girl Who Cried Wolf who was maybe also a psychopathic killer. Or something. Maybe her parents’ disappointment in their less accomplished child wasn’t misplaced. “In a very hard-to-reach place a million miles from anything resembling a city, called Grizzly Harbor. Well. This is Fool’s Cove, technically. A . . . suburb of Grizzly Harbor?”

  “Congratulations. You looked at a map.”

  “A lot of maps, actually. My GPS doesn’t always work out here.”

  Blue set his tablet aside then and fixed that dark, assessing gaze of his on her.

  But this time, Everly was prepared. She still felt as if she were falling, the same way she’d felt when she’d rolled out of that car and staggered toward him across the dirt and weeds and roots in the cleared bit of woods behind the lodge. She’d felt as if she were toppling from a great height, like the mountain itself, then hit the ground hard, flat on her back so that she lost her breath.

  That was what it was like when Blue Hendricks looked at her.

  It was how she’d known it was him. Oh, sure, if she looked closely, she could see the hint of the skinny, feral boy she remembered—but he’d always had this effect on her. When she’d been a little girl, she hadn’t known what it was—she’d just known that he was her favorite. Her hero.

  She knew what it was now. It was just . . . him. He was electric.

  And he was the only one who could help her.

  “You nodded off in the middle of a meeting you apparently drove three thousand miles to make happen.” Blue’s gaze was steady. Discerning. As if he were trying to see right through her. Or, worse, already did. “Who does that? Is this a drug thing?”

  Maybe it wasn’t surprising that Everly felt transparent. Pale, really, all the way through. Or maybe that was the odd summer light, making a new set of accusations about her character and choices and entire freaking life punch through her like bullets. Making her wonder how much more she could take.

  As much as you have to, she told herself.

  She made herself stand taller when she wanted to droop. Or maybe curl into the fetal position and sob. “I guess I was tired.”

  “Because you drove here from Chicago.”

  “I was afraid they would stop me at the airport if I tried to fly.”

  “But you figured the border would be a piece of cake.”

  “I guess I didn’t think about the border. But they didn’t stop me.”

  “What was your plan if you couldn’t find me?” he asked, in that quiet, considered way he had, which only made him sound more menacing. “You were just going to turn around and drive back? And then hand-wave away the two-week absence to any interested parties?”

  “That, or I figured someone would just kill me already, and end the discussion right there,” Everly retorted. Her teeth hurt, so she unclenched them. “At least this way I got to see some really pretty scenery first.”

  “I like the attitude,” Blue said, though his tone suggested otherwise. His tone plus the hard way he was studying her. “Who knows? It might save you.”

  “And here I was hoping that you would.”

  Blue laughed at that. And maybe it was the strange light all around him that made this seem like some kind of dream—though definitely not a good one.

  Everly had always prided herself on her ability to read people and situations. It was what made her good at her advertising job, dealing with clients who never, ever said what they wanted, and would then get furious if the agency failed to deliver what was in their heads. But she’d been reading this situation wrong from the start, and Blue was probably one more thing she wasn’t seeing as she should.

  It didn’t take a psychic to understand that Blue Hendricks was not a man to be trifled with. A wise woman would have maintained a healthy distance and a matching level of scrupulous courtesy so as not to set him off.

  Too bad Everly couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt anything resembling healthy.

  “Even if I was the hero you’re dumb enough to think I am?” Blue laughed again, with even less humor than before, and Everly had to fight to breathe through it, because it was yet another weapon, and he wielded it too well. “What makes you so sure that I would want to save you? Some girl I barely remember?”

  “You remember me. I get the feeling you remember everything. In minute detail.”

  “I remember things that matter.”

  That stung. She knew it was meant to, so she only raised her brows in a kind of challenge rather than let the deliberate slap drag her under. “Your friends said they would help me. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.”

  “My friends don’t get to make this decision, little girl. I do.” His mouth—God, she had to stop staring at his mouth and imagining . . . things—curved. It didn’t make him seem any more approachable. “You’re a ghost from my past, not theirs. That makes you my problem. That’s how it works here.”

  “Then I guess this is my lucky day.” She folded her arms in front of her, and blinked as she took in the strange twilight that made the water look like wine and the pine trees seem like intent, hovering spirits. “Or my lucky night, whatever. Because I feel pretty certain that if you weren’t going to help me, you wouldn’t have tucked me in for a nice nap in your cabin.”

  His mouth curved again, but this time, it made an echoing heat curl through her. She could feel it all the way down in her toes.

  “This isn’t my cabin. If you were in my cabin, you’d know. You’d get a very specific invitation, and you’d have no doubt what your role was once you got there. And here’s a hint, Everly. I don’t like damsels in distress in my bed.”

  She pressed her toes hard against the wooden deck beneath her, happy it was cold enough to clear her head. Because under no
circumstances could she permit herself to think about his bed. Much less herself in it. With him.

  In a specific role.

  “Are you going to help me, Blue?” she asked, and she didn’t mean for her voice to go so soft halfway through the question. Almost plaintive.

  She sounded almost exactly as scared as she’d been every moment since that terrible night back in Chicago. She hadn’t given in to the fear, not in all the awful, confusing weeks since. She hadn’t let her own panic sweep her under, drag her down.

  And she didn’t know why—standing here on a remote porch in the middle of the Alaskan summer night with a man she found as overwhelming as the impossible light at this hour—she felt so shaken. As if Blue were the thing that might break her, after all.

  Or maybe that was just any normal woman’s reaction to imagining herself in Blue’s bed—but Everly shoved that thought aside.

  Blue didn’t reply. He let one moment drag by, then another. His dark gaze never left her face, and Everly felt herself redden. She told herself it was nothing but leftover emotion, secondhand sensation, from everything she had been through. Nothing to do with imagining invitations to Blue’s actual cabin, she assured herself.

  Of course not.

  But she realized she was clenching her arms tight against her body, as if she were bracing herself for a blow.

  “Tell me what happened back in Chicago,” Blue said, long after she’d decided he might never speak again. “Exactly what happened.”

  “I thought I already did.”

  “You gave me an overview. Maybe you thought you’d tell us all the details in the office? But you fell asleep.”

  All Everly could remember from that office was the men. A lot of men. It had seemed like a crowd of them, a battalion, each one bigger and more intimidating and gruffer than the next. She’d curled up in an oversized armchair in one corner, tucked her legs beneath her, and tried to calm her roaring pulse. She couldn’t remember the names, tossed out too quickly. Or maybe she hadn’t tried to hear them because she could barely take it all in.

  That she’d found Blue. And that he came with big, strapping friends who were just as overwhelming, clearly ex-military, and obviously lethal as he was.

  “I’m not on drugs, by the way,” she told him. Awkwardly. “To clarify.”

  He nodded, as if he’d already come to that conclusion himself. “You don’t have that flat, dull thing going on in your eyes. But you wouldn’t be the first pretty woman to pop prescription pills and pretend she didn’t have a problem.”

  “I drink coffee like it’s my job. So depending on your view of caffeine, I guess I have a problem. But only that problem. No narcotics as a chaser to my skinny mocha latte.”

  “I looked you up.” Blue tapped the tablet next to him, though the screen was dark. “You work at an ad agency. My impression of ad agencies is that they run on cocaine.”

  “Why is it important to you that I be a drug addict?” She frowned at him. “Do I look like a drug addict?”

  “You look skinny, weak, and frazzled,” Blue said, and it was the unvarnished way he said it that got to her. That made her feel shaky on her feet. As if he wasn’t offering an opinion but reciting facts. Obvious, inarguable facts. “Much skinnier, weaker, and more frazzled than any of the pictures posted on your social media accounts.”

  “One minute I’m pretty but possibly a pill-popper, and the next I look like crap. Got it.”

  “I’m real sorry I’m not as cuddly and sweet and cordial as you expected your fantasy hero to be, Everly. That must suck for you. Captain America isn’t real, but I am, and like hell am I getting caught up in a mess if it’s all in your head.”

  “It’s not in my head.” Blue’s eyes narrowed, which was how Everly realized she’d pretty much shouted that at him. That and the echo from the trees standing sentry behind them. “I’ve had entirely too many people tell me I’m making things up lately. I’m pretty creative, but even in my wildest imaginings, I couldn’t kill off my roommate in my dreams and have her actually go missing the next day.”

  “Unless you killed her in a drug-fueled rage and were so out of it you imagined the rest of it.”

  “I’ve heard of drug-fueled rages, but not drug-fueled cleaning frenzies that erased all traces of the damage.”

  “Depends on the drug.”

  “I’m not on drugs,” she told him, and even she could hear how frayed her own temper was getting with each word. “Just like I’m not making things up to get attention, or such a drama queen that I want to imagine people are following me. I didn’t have a bad dream or a psychotic break. I’m not crazy, and I’m not lying. But you don’t have to take my word for it.” She thrust out her arms, which would have been more effective if she hadn’t been wearing a jacket, concealing her veins. “I’ll take a blood test right now.”

  Blue swung his legs down from the bench and then sat there, facing her. He didn’t say he believed her. He didn’t assure her she was sane. And still, she felt calmer, as if his full attention was the same thing.

  “I don’t want your blood,” he said quietly. “I want your story. The whole story, nothing left out. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” Everly replied, as if it were a vow.

  And maybe it made sense that she was barefoot now, standing here on the edge of the world in front of Blue, because it brought her back to that night a few weeks ago when she’d also been terrified. Barefoot and outside herself. She pressed her feet harder into the wooden planks beneath her, again, and told herself she felt steadier when she did.

  But the truth was, the only thing that really made her feel steady was the way Blue regarded her. Intent and serious. Unflinching.

  Some kind of alarm rang in her head, but she ignored it. She hadn’t felt steady in so long that it felt like a gift, here in the middle of this strange, bright night. In this odd place so far away from everything she knew and anyone who knew her. With a man who was nothing like the comic book hero she’d conjured up in her head during her endless drive, but seemed instead like something she’d dreamed up just to fit the rugged backdrop of this isolated place, so still at this hour except for the lapping of the water against the rocky shore that it seemed to quiet her, too.

  Or maybe that was just Blue.

  “Every single detail, Everly,” he said again, and this time it was more like an order than a request, but she liked that, too. “Breath by breath.”

  Four

  Everly told herself that all she had to do was tell her story. There was no reason to feel as if this were a confession, no matter how Blue was watching her, his big arms crossed over his chest and that stoic expression on his face.

  This was what she wanted, she reminded herself. This was why she’d come here.

  “That night I went to bed early because I had a big presentation the next day,” she told him, letting the memories wash over her. Not holding them at bay the way she normally did. “But I woke up again sometime after midnight.”

  “What time is ‘sometime’?”

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t figure out why I was awake, and I lay there for a while, trying to figure out why my heart was beating so fast. I don’t know how long I did that, but when I looked at the clock, it was one fifty-two.”

  “That’s very specific.”

  “It’s burned into my head.”

  Branded, more like. Everly almost reached up to rub her fingers over the welt she was sure must be there on her forehead, broadcasting the last moment her life was anything like normal to anyone who cared to look, but stopped herself. Barely.

  “You often wake up in the middle of the night?”

  “No. I usually sleep like the dead.” That struck her as unfortunate phrasing, and she cleared her throat, but Blue’s gaze remained impassive. She found that encouraging, somehow. “The minute my head hits the pillow
, I’m out until my alarm goes off the next morning.”

  She didn’t tell him how strange it had been this last month to personally witness all those dark, narrow hours she usually slept through. She didn’t try to explain what it was like to sit up, hollow-eyed and half-panicked, staring at her roommate’s empty bed at three forty-five in the morning, willing it to be full again.

  Things were different in the middle of the night. Time was too round, too broad. The clock was her enemy, slow and sluggish. Every hour seemed soft and insubstantial, and still the minutes barely inched by. Shadows seemed more real and far more threatening. Dreams and waking tangled in on themselves.

  And all the insomnia in the world hadn’t brought Rebecca back.

  “That something your roommate would have known? That you sleep easy and don’t wake up?”

  Everly considered that. “Rebecca and I were friendly, sure. We weren’t, you know, best friends or anything. I don’t know if we discussed sleep patterns.”

  “It was a yes or no question.”

  “Yes, then.” Everly tried not to glare at him. She thought he could save her, it was true. Or help her, anyway. But that didn’t mean he was required to be overly nice while he did it. It was ridiculous that she should feel that caving sensation in her belly. As if he was hurting her feelings. As if her feelings had anything to do with this in the first place. “Rebecca and I had been roommates for a year. More than a year. It’s safe to say she knows my sleeping habits, yes.”