Last True Hero

by Diana Gardin

  She allows me to help her up. She’s a little unsteady on her feet, but she seems like she’ll be able to make it up the steps and to my four-door Jeep Wrangler.

  “Wait!” she cries, turning toward the ocean. “My board!”

  “Shhh, I got it,” I reply, pointing to where it’s laying on the beach.

  She nods in relief.

  “Let me get you to the car, and then I’ll come back for our boards. Okay?”

  I’ve almost forgotten about it. It usually doesn’t take people this long, but I’m going to give Greta credit because she was unconscious for part of the time we’ve been together today. Her eyes stray down to my leg, following the metal trail to my prosthetic foot.

  “Oh, Grisham,” she whispers. Her eyes fill with tears.

  “Hush,” I admonish her. “I’m used to it by now. Hey, I’m good as new, Greta. I got out there to pull you in, didn’t I?”

  She nods and rewards me with a small smile. My heart stutters, remembering what it was like when I really saw that smile for the first time.

  I met Greta a year ago when she became my best friend’s roommate. The best friend I’d secretly been in love with since we were kids. When Berkeley moved in with Greta I didn’t pay her much attention. But after Berkeley got together with her boyfriend Dare, my heart took a beating. There was one morning when I was at their apartment, giving Dare the business, when Greta walked into the room wearing really tiny pajamas.

  Really. Fucking. Tiny.

  I couldn’t help but follow the trail of her long legs, past her little shorts, pausing at the small patch of skin exposed on her stomach. Then, when I made eye contact and saw those baby blues, clear as the fucking sky above and filled with desire, I almost lost my mind.

  I left, because my head wasn’t in a place to deal with feelings for another girl.

  But right now, connecting with her again like this…something inside of me is pulling me toward her like a magnet. I can get lost in eyes as big and as blue as hers.

  I think I might even want to.

  “I’m sorry, Grisham,” she says sincerely as she blinks slowly. I’m distracted as she pulls her soft, plump bottom lip into her mouth and bites down. I’m mesmerized as the skin around her teeth turns pale.

  “What?”

  “I said I’m sorry? About the explosion that caused you to lose part of your leg. I heard about it…” She trails off, her eyes closing briefly as if she’s in pain.

  I reach out and grab her chin, causing her eyes to fly open and lock with mine once more. A stirring in my shorts grabs my attention, but I push my physical reaction to this girl out of my head so I can finish this conversation. Her eyes stay locked on mine, instead of straying back down to my foot.

  This surprises the shit out of me, because usually I can’t keep anyone’s attention for more than a few seconds before they’re looking at it again.

  “I can do everything I did before,” I tell her softly. “Except lead my boys out into the damn desert again, that is. My career focus has shifted a bit, that’s all. But I’m okay, Greta. Thanks for worrying about me.”

  She nods, giving me a real smile for the first time.

  Good Lord.

  I’m floored. Two rows of perfect white teeth, perfect full lips forming a smile that’s just slightly crooked. She’s like seeing the sun again after months in the dark. Holy shit. I’m toast. I’m not ready for this right now. I’m in no better state of mind than I was a year ago. In some ways, I’m worse. So I’m going to chalk whatever I’m feeling right now up to residual attraction from a year ago and from the high I get from saving someone’s life.

  “Let’s get you to the car.” I take her elbow and steer her toward the steps.

  It’s slow going, but we make it to the little parking lot. Her forehead wrinkles in confusion as we approach my Jeep.

  “Where’s your little sports car? The Audi?”

  “Kind of hard to haul my board and my bikes around on that thing. I like to do shit outside…a lot. My Jeep is better for that type of stuff.”

  And my father bought me that Audi. After I graduated from school, I decided there was no way I was going to let him keep paying my way.

  But I kept that thought to myself.

  She pulls her pink and black wet suit off her shoulders, and my eyes move to that spot like I’ve spotted a shiny object. She wiggles, shimmying out of the suit revealing a tiny black bikini underneath. Coupled with miles and fucking miles of milky skin, she’s an incredible sight. I let my gaze sweep up and down her frame just once before finding her face again. She didn’t seem to notice my gawking, squeezing out her suit and placing it on the floor in the back of the Jeep.

  She nibbles her lip again, and I groan inwardly.

  “My towel is in my bag, down there.” She points toward the beach.

  “I’ll get it when I get your board. Anything else, ma’am?”

  I exaggerate my southern accent on the last line, making her giggle.

  “Nope, I think that’s it, sir.” She picks up my game, exaggerating hers and I feel warmth spread through my body starting in the very center of me.

  “Funny girl.”

  After I help her into the Jeep—ignoring her protests about her being wet—and turn on the engine so that the air conditioning is blasting, I turn and jog back down to the beach. I grab my surfboard and hers under one arm and load her bag onto the other.

  Even though I’m only taking her to the doctor, and it’s been months since I’ve seen her, I can’t stop the feeling of giddy anticipation overwhelming me at the thought of seeing her sitting there in my car.

  After Berkeley, I changed a lot about my life. I stopped answering to my asshole father. I gave my mother an ultimatum. I changed my job trajectory in the navy, entering the SEALs training program against my father’s wishes. I sold the Audi and bought a Jeep. I also bought a small house in Lone Sands; close to the beach I’d always loved so much instead of living on base.

  The one thing I hadn’t changed was my relationship status. I was definitely in the single category. My parents and I had basically planned my life around their goal for me to marry Berkeley one day. And I’d stupidly bought into it; because she and I were so close there wasn’t anyone else I could imagine spending my life with. Any girl I dated before then was just a distraction.

  And now any girl I dated was the same thing. A distraction. A way to pass the time. I chose girls who knew the score, girls who typically dated guys in the navy because they weren’t going to be around for long. Nothing serious, no strings attached.

  But as I climb into my Jeep and glance over at Greta sitting there with a genuine, sweet-and-sexy smile on her face, with that body that could cause men to jump off of bridges, something inside me stirs and stretches. Something that had been dormant for a long time. Something that tells me Greta Owen isn’t going to be like other girls. I’m not going to be able to love her body one night and then walk away the next day.

  Without even saying a word, she demands to be more than that.

  I look down at my left leg. I’m not even a whole man anymore. I’d been through some shit in the last year that had changed me fundamentally, both inside and out. There’s no way I can be everything to someone else.

  I know it in my gut.

  I’m going to drive Greta to the doctor and make sure she’s okay. And then I’m going to walk away.

  Because at this point in my life, that’s the best possible thing I can do for a woman like this.

  Just walk away.

  About the Author

  Diana Gardin is a wife of one and a mom of two. Writing is her second full-time job to that, and she loves it! Diana writes contemporary romance in the Young Adult and New Adult categories. She’s also a former elementary school teacher. She loves steak, sugar cookies, and Coke and hates working out.

  Learn more at:

  DianaGardin.com

  Twitter: @ DianalynnGardin

  Facebook.com/AuthorDia
naGardin

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Welcome

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  1: Dare

  2: Berkeley

  3: Dare

  4: Berkeley

  5: Dare

  6: Berkeley

  7: Dare

  8: Berkeley

  9: Dare

  10: Berkeley

  11: Dare

  12: Berkeley

  13: Dare

  14: Berkeley

  15: Dare

  16: Berkeley

  17: Dare

  18: Berkeley

  19: Dare

  20: Berkeley

  21: Dare

  22: Berkeley

  23: Dare

  24: Berkeley

  25: Dare

  26: Berkeley

  27: Dare

  28: Berkeley

  29: Dare

  30: Berkeley

  31: Dare

  32: Berkeley

  33: Dare

  34: Berkeley

  35: Dare

  Epilogue: Dare

  A Preview of SAVED BY THE SEAL

  About the Author

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  Newsletters

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2015 by Diana Gardin

  Preview of Saved by the SEAL copyright © 2015 by Diana Gardin

  Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First ebook edition: November 2015

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  ISBN 978-1-4555-9472-6

  E3