His big mistake was wearing the uniform.

Without it, in street clothes, he would be easy to overlook in a crowd, especially a crowd like this one. But with all those colorful ribbons adorning his chest, in that white jacket that had been tailored to fit his trim body, his eyes seemed an even darker shade of blue, and his jaw seemed more square.

Everyone wanted to talk to him. And though Brittany couldn’t hear what Wes was saying, he was evidently telling a long story, filled with gestures and big facial expressions. When he was done, he pointed directly at Brittany. And they all turned to look at her, almost as one.

And wasn’t that disconcerting? Wes gestured to her, and though she couldn’t hear him, she could read his lips. Come here, baby.

Baby?

What was it Han Solo always said to Chewbacca? I have a bad feeling about this.

Night Watch
Suzanne Brockmann

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

SUZANNE BROCKMANN

lives just west of Boston in a house always filled with her friends—actors and musicians and storytellers and artists and teachers. When not writing award-winning romances about U.S. Navy SEALs, among others, she sings in an a capella group called SERIOUS FUN, manages the professional acting careers of her two children, volunteers at the Appalachian Benefit Coffeehouse and always answers letters from readers. Send her a SASE along with your letter to P.O. Box 5092, Wayland, MA 01778.

For Ed and Eric,

who understand what friendship means. I love you guys.

My heartfelt thanks to the real teams of SEALs, and to all of the courageous men and women in the U.S. military who sacrifice so much to keep America the land of the free and the home of the brave. And an even bigger thanks (if possible) to the wives, husbands, mothers, fathers and children who are waiting for our military heroes and heroines to do their jobs and then come safely home. God bless—my thoughts and prayers are with you!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

Chapter 1

Brittany Evans hated to be late. But parking had been a pain in the butt, and she’d spent way too much time trying to decide what to wear—as if it really mattered.

She surveyed the scattering of people standing around the college baseball stadium’s hot dog stand as she came out the door that led from the locker rooms.

And there he was.

Standing under the overhang, out of the gently falling rain, watching the players on the ball field. Leaning against the wall with his back to her.

At least she thought it was him. They’d never really met—at least not for more than two and a half seconds. Brittany, this is whatever-his-naval-rank-was Wes Skelly. Wes, this is Melody Jones’s sister, Britt.

Hey, how are you, nice to meet you, gotta go.

The man who might or might not be Wes Skelly glanced at his watch, glanced toward the main entrance of the stadium. His hair was longer and lighter than she remembered—of course, it was hard to remember much from only two and a half seconds of face time.

She could see his face better as he turned slightly. It was…a face. Not stunningly handsome like Mel’s husband, Harlan “Cowboy” Jones. But not exactly Frankenstein’s monster, either.

Wes wasn’t smiling. In fact, he looked a little tense, a little angry. Hopefully not at her for being late. No, probably just for being. She’d heard a lot about Wes Skelly over the past few years. That is, assuming this was really Wes Skelly.

But he had to be. No one else in the place looked even remotely like a Navy SEAL.

This guy wasn’t big, though—not like her brother-in-law or his good friend Senior Chief Harvard-the-Incredible-Hulk Becker—but there was something about him that seemed capable of anything and maybe a little dangerous.

He was dressed in civilian clothes—khaki pants with a dark jacket over a button-down shirt and tie. Poor man. From what Mel had told her about Wes, he would rather swim in shark-infested waters than get dressed up.

Of course, look at her. Wearing these stupid sandals with heels instead of her usual comfortable flats. She’d put on more than her usual amount of makeup, too.

But the plan was to meet at the ball game, and then go out to dinner someplace nicer than the local pizza joint.

Neither of them had counted on rain screwing up the first part of the plan.

Wes looked at his watch again and sighed.

And Brittany realized that his leaning against the wall was only feigned casualness. He was standing still, yet somehow he remained in motion—tapping his fingers or his foot, slightly shifting his weight, searching his pockets for something, checking his watch. He wasn’t letting himself pace, but he wanted to.

Gee whiz, she wasn’t that late.

Of course maybe her five-minute delay wasn’t the problem. Maybe this man just never stood still. And wasn’t that just what she needed—a date with a guy with Attention Deficit Disorder.

Silently cursing her sister, Brittany approached him, arranging her face into a smile. “You have that same ‘Heavenly Father, save me from doing favors for friends and relatives’ look in your eyes that I’ve got,” she said. “Therefore you must be Wes Skelly.”

He laughed, and it completely transformed his face, softening all the hard lines and making his blue eyes seem to twinkle.

Irish. Darnit, he was definitely at least part Irish.

“That makes you Brittany Evans,” he said, holding out his hand. It was warm, his handshake firm. “Nice to finally meet you.”

Nice hands. Nice smile. Nice steady, direct gaze. Nice guy—good liar, too. She liked him instantly, despite the potential ADD.

“Sorry I’m a few minutes late,” she said. “I had to drive almost all the way to Arizona to find a parking space.”

“Yeah, I’ve noticed that traffic really sucks here,” he said as he studied her face, probably trying to figure out how she could possibly be related to gorgeous, delicately angelic-looking Melody Jones.

“We don’t look very much alike,” she told him. “My sister and I.”

She’d surprised him with her directness, but he recovered quickly. “What, are you nuts? Your eyes are a little different—a different shade of blue. But other than that, you’re a…a variation on the same lovely theme.”

Oh, for crying out loud. What had her sister’s husband told this guy? That she was a sure thing? Just liberally sling the woo, Skelly, and she’ll be putty in your hands because she’s lonely and pathetic and hasn’t had a man in her bed—let alone a date—in close to a decade?

It was her own stupid fault for giving in to Melody’s pressure. A blind date. What was she thinking?

Okay, she knew what she was thinking. Mel had asked her to go out with Wes Skelly as a favor. It was, she’d said in that baby sister manipulative manner of hers—the one that came with the big blue eyes, the one that had enabled her to twist Britt around her little finger for the past several decades—the only thing she wanted for her upcoming birthday. Pretty please with sugar on top…?

Britt should have cried foul and gotten her a Dave Matthews CD instead.

“Let’s set some ground rules,” Brittany told Wes now. “Rule number one—no crap, okay? No hyperbole, no B.S. Only pure honesty. My sister and your so-called friend Harlan Jones manipulated us to this particular level of hell, but now that we’re here we’re going to play by our own rules. Agreed?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Sure, but—”

“I have no intention of sleeping with you,” she informed him briskly. “I’m neither lonely nor pathetic. I know exactly what I look like, exactly who I am and I happen to be quite happy with myself, thank you very much. I’m here because I love my little sister, although right now I’m trying to imagine the most painfully horrific way to torture her for doing this to me—and to you.”

He opened his mouth, but she wasn’t done and she didn’t let him speak.

“Now. I know my sister, and I know she was hoping we’d gaze into each other’s eyes, fall hopelessly in love and get married before the year’s end.” She paused for a fraction of a second to look searchingly into his eyes. They were very pretty blue eyes, but her friend Julia had a Alaskan husky with pretty blue eyes, too. “Nope,” she said. “Didn’t happen for me. How about you?”

He laughed. “Sorry,” he said. “But—”

“No need for excuses,” she cut him off again. “People think alone means lonely. Have you noticed that?”

He didn’t answer right away. Not until it was good and clear that she was finally finished and it was his turn to talk.

“Yeah,” he said then. “And people who are together—people who are a couple—they’re always trying to pair up all of their single friends. It’s definitely obnoxious.”

“Well meant,” Britt agreed, “but completely annoying. I am sorry that you got roped into this.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” he said. “I mean, I was coming to Los Angeles anyway. And how many times has Lieutenant Jones asked me to do him a favor? Maybe twice. How many times has he bailed out my butt? Too many to count. He’s an excellent officer and a good friend, and if he wants me to have dinner with you, hey, I’m having dinner with you. He was right, by the way.”

Britt wasn’t sure she liked either the gleam in his eye or that grin. She narrowed her own eyes. “About what?”

“I was having a little trouble there for a while, getting in a word edgewise.”

She opened her mouth, and then closed it. Then opened it. “Well, heck, it’s not exactly as if you’re known throughout the SEAL teams as Mr. Taciturn.”

Wes’s grin widened. “That’s what makes it all the more amazing. So what’s rule number three?”

She blinked. “Rule three?” She didn’t have three rules. There was just the one.

“One is no bull—Um. No bull,” he said. “Two is no sex. That’s fine ’cause that’s not why I’m here. I’m not in a place where I’m ready to get involved with anyone on that permanent of a level, and besides, although you’re very pretty—and that’s not crap. I’m being honest here as per rule one—you’re not my type.”

“Your type.” Oh, this was going to be good. “What or who exactly is your type?”

He opened his mouth, but she thumped him on the chest as the action on the field caught her eye. It was a very solid chest despite the fact that in her heels she was nearly as tall as he was.

“Hold that thought,” she ordered. “Andy’s at bat.”

Wes fell obediently silent. She knew that he didn’t have children, but he apparently understood the unspoken parental agreement about paying complete and total attention when one’s kid was in the batter’s box.

Of course, her kid was nineteen years old and a college freshman on a full baseball scholarship. Her kid was six feet three inches tall and two hundred and twenty pounds. Her kid had a batting average of .430, and a propensity for knocking the ball clear over the fence, and quite possibly into the next county.

But it had just started to rain harder.

Andy let the first ball go past him—a strike.

“How can he see in this?” Britt muttered. “He can’t possibly see in this. Besides it’s not supposed to rain in Southern California.” That had been one of the perks of moving out here from Massachusetts.

The pitcher wound up, let go of the ball, and…tock. The sound of Andy’s bat connecting with the ball was sharp and sweet and so much more vibrant than the little anemic click heard when watching baseball on TV. Brittany had never known anything like it until after she’d adopted Andy, until he’d started playing baseball with the same ferocity that he approached everything else in life.

“Yes!” The ball sailed over the fence and Andy jogged around the bases. Brittany alternately clapped and whistled piercingly, fingers between her teeth.

“Jones said your kid was pretty good.”

“Pretty good my eye,” Britt countered. “Andy’s college baseball’s Barry Bonds. That’s his thirty-first homerun this year, I’ll have you know.”

“He being scouted?” Wes asked.

“Actually, he is,” she told him. “Mostly because there’s another kid on the team—Dustin Melero—who’s been getting lots of attention. He’s a pitcher—a real hotshot, you know? Scouts come to see him, but he’s still pretty inconsistent. Kind of lacking in the maturity department, too. The scouts end up sticking around to take a look at Andy.”

“You gonna let him play pro ball before he finishes college?”

“He’s nineteen,” Brittany replied. “I don’t let him do anything. It’s his life and his choice. He knows I’ll support him whatever he decides to do.”

“I wish you were my mom.”

“I think you’re a little too old even for me to adopt,” she told him. Although Wes was definitely younger than she was, by at least five years. And maybe even more. What was her sister thinking?

“Andy was what? Twelve when you adopted him?” he asked.

“Thirteen.” Irish. Melody was thinking that Wes was Irish, and that Brittany had a definite thing for a man with a twinkle in his eyes and a smile that could light his entire being. Mel was thinking about her own intense happiness with Harlan Jones, and about the fact that one night, years ago, Britt had had a little too much to drink and admitted to her sister that her biggest regret about her failed marriage to That-Jerk-Quentin was that she would have liked to have had a child—a biological child—of her own.

That would teach her to be too heavy-handed when making strawberry daiquiris.

“That definitely qualifies you for sainthood,” Wes said. “Adopting a thirteen-year-old juvie? Man.”

“All he really needed was a stable home environment—”

“You’re either crazy or Mother Teresa’s sister.”

“Oh, I’m not a saint. Believe me. I just…I fell in love with the kid. He’s great.” She tried to explain. “He grew up with no one. I mean, completely abandoned—physically by his father and emotionally by his mother. And then there he was, about to be shipped away again, to another foster home, and there I was, and…I wanted him to stay with me. We’ve had our tough moments, sure, but…”

The look in Wes’s blue eyes—a kind of a thoughtful intensity, as best she could read it—was making her nervous. This man wasn’t the happy-go-lucky second cousin to a leprechaun with ADD that she’d first thought him to be. He wasn’t jittery, as she’d first thought, although standing still was clearly a challenge for him. No, he was more like a lightning bolt—crackling with barely harnessed excess energy. And while it was true he had a good sense of humor and a killer smile, there was a definite darkness to him. An edge. It made her like him even more.

Oh, danger! Danger, Will Robinson!

“You were going to tell me about your type,” she reminded him. “And please don’t tell me you go for the sweet young thing, or I’ll have to hit you. Although, according to some of my patients, I’m both sweet and young. Of course they’re pushing 95.”

That got his smile back. “My type tends to go to a party and ends up dancing on tables. Preferably nearly naked.”

Brittany snorted with laughter. “You win, I’m not your type. And I should have known that. Melody has mentioned in the past that you were into the, uh, higher arts.”

“I think she must’ve meant martial arts,” he countered. The rain continued to pour from the sky, spraying them lightly with a fine mist whenever the wind blew. He didn’t seem to notice or care. “Lt. Jones told me that you came to Los Angeles to go to school. To become a nurse.”

“I am a nurse,” she told him. “I’m taking classes to become a nurse practitioner.”

“That’s great,” he said.

She smiled back at him. “Yes, it is, thank you.”

“You know, maybe they set us up,” he suggested, “because they know how often I need a nurse. Save me the emergency room fees when I need stitches.”

“A fighter, huh?” Brittany shook her head. “I should have guessed. It’s always the little guys who…” She stopped herself. Oh, dear. Men generally didn’t like to hear themselves referred to as the little guy. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“It’s okay,” he said easily, no evidence of the famous Skelly temper apparent. “Although I prefer short. Little implies…certain other things.”

She had to laugh. “A, I wasn’t thinking—not even for a fraction of a second—about your…certain other things, and B, even if I were, why should it matter when we’ve already established that our friendship isn’t going to have anything to do with sex?”

“I was going with Rule One,” he countered. “No crap, just pure honesty.”

“Yeah, right. Men are idiots. Have you noticed?”

“Absolutely,” he said, obviously as at ease with her as she was with him. It was remarkable, really, the way she felt as if she’d known him for years, as if she were completely in tune with his sense of humor. “And as long as it’s established that we’re well-hung idiots, we’re okay with that.” He peered toward the field. “I think they’re calling the game.”

They were. The rain wasn’t letting up and the players were leaving the field.

“Is it temporary? Because I don’t mind waiting,” Wes added. “If Andy were my kid, I’d try to be at every home game. I mean, even if he wasn’t Babe Ruth reborn, I’d want to, you know? You must be beyond proud of him.”

How incredibly sweet. “I am.”

“You want to wait inside?” he asked.

“I think there’s some other event scheduled for the field for later this afternoon,” Britt told him. “They don’t have time for a rain delay—they’ll have to reschedule the game, or call it or whatever they do in baseball. So, no. It’s over. We don’t have to wait.”

“You hungry?” Wes asked. “We could have an early dinner.”

“I’d like that,” Britt said, and amazingly it was true. On her way over, she’d made a list of about twenty-five different plausible-sounding reasons why they should skip dinner, but now she mentally deleted them. “Do you mind if we go down to the locker room first? I want to give my car keys to Andy.”

“Aha,” Wes said. “I pass the you’ll-get-into-my-car-with-me test. Good for me.”

She led the way toward the building. “Even better, you passed the okay-I-will-go-out-to-dinner-with-you test.”

He actually held the door for her. “Was that in jeopardy?”

“Blind dates and I are mortal enemies from way back,” Britt told him. “You should consider the fact that I even agreed to meet you to be a huge testament to sisterly love.”

“You passed my test, too,” Wes said. “I only go to dinner with women who absolutely do not want to have sex with me. Oh, wait. Damn. Maybe that’s been my problem all these years….”

She laughed, letting herself enjoy the twinkle in his eyes as he opened yet another door—the one to the stairwell—for her. “Sweetie, I knew I passed your test when you asked me to adopt you.”

“And yet you turned me down,” he countered. “What does that tell me?”

“That I’m too young to be your mother.” Brittany led the way down the stairs, enjoying herself immensely. Who knew she’d like Wes Skelly this much? After Melody had called, setting up this date, she and Andy had jokingly referred to him as the load. He was her burden to bear for her sister’s birthday. “You can be the kid brother I always wanted, though.”

“Yeah, I don’t know about that.”

The hallway outside the locker rooms wasn’t filled to capacity as it usually was after a game, with girlfriends and dorm-mates of the players crowded together. Today, only a very few bedraggled diehards were there. Brittany looked, but Andy’s girlfriend, Danielle, wasn’t among them. Which was just as well, since Andy had told her Dani hadn’t been feeling well today. If she were coming down with something, standing in the rain would only make her worse.

“My track record with sisters isn’t that good,” Wes continued. “I tend to piss them off, after which they run off and marry my best friend.”

“I heard about that.” Britt stopped outside the home team’s locker room door. It was slightly ajar. “Mel told me that Bobby Taylor just married your sister…Colleen, wasn’t it?”

Wes leaned against the wall. “She tell you about the shouting that went down first?”

She glanced at him.

He swore softly. “Of course she did. I’m surprised the Associated Press didn’t pick up the story.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as she—”

“No,” he said. “It was. I was a jerk. I can’t believe you agreed to meet me.”

“Whatever you did, it wasn’t a capital offense. My sister apparently forgives you.”

Wes snorted. “Yeah, Melody, right. She’s really harsh and unforgiving. She forgave me before Colleen did.”

“It must be nice to know you have such good friends.”

He nodded. “Yeah, you know, it really is.”

He met her gaze, and there it was again. That darkness or sadness or whatever it was, lurking back there in his eyes. And Brittany knew. The outwardly upbeat Irishman would be fun to hang around with and was even adorable in his own loudly funny way. But it was this hidden part of him, this edge, that would, if she let it, make him irresistible.

He was, without a doubt, her type. But she wasn’t his, thank you, God.

Eddie Sunamura, the third baseman, popped his head out of the locker room. His wife—June—was one of the soaking wet diehards. She lit up when she saw him, and he grinned back at her. They were only two years older than Andy, a thought that never failed to give Britt a jolt.

“Give me ten more minutes, Mrs. S.,” he called to June, and Brittany couldn’t keep from groaning.

“Eddie, you’re unbelievably hokey,” she said.

“Hey, Britt.”

“Have you seen Andy?” she asked him.

He pointed down the hall before he vanished back into the locker room.

And there was Andy. At the end of the hallway. In the middle of what looked to be a very intense discussion with the team’s star pitcher, Dustin Melero.

Andy was tall, but Dustin had an inch on him.

“Man, he grew,” Wes said as he looked at Andy. “I met him about four years ago, and he was only…” He held his hand up to about his shoulder.

It was then, as they were gazing down the hallway at the two young men, that Andy dropped his mitt and shoved Dustin with a resounding crash against the wall of lockers.

Brittany had already taken three steps toward them, when Wes caught her arm. “Don’t,” he said. “Let me. If you can, just turn around and don’t look.”

Yeah, like hell…

Still, she managed not to follow as Wes hustled down the hall to where Andy and Dustin were nose to nose, ready to break both the school rules and each others’ faces.

As she watched, Wes put himself directly between them. They were too far away for her to hear his words, but she could imagine them. “What’s up, guys?” The two younger men towered over him, but Wes somehow seemed bigger.

Andy was glowering—the expression on his face a direct flashback to the street-smart thirteen-year-old he’d once been.

He just kept shaking his head as Wes talked. Finally, Dustin—who was laughing—spoke. Wes turned and gave the taller boy his full attention.

And then, all of a sudden, Wes had Dustin up against the lockers, and was talking to him with a great deal of intensity.

The new expression on Andy’s face would have been humorous if Brittany hadn’t been quite so worried at the amount of damage a full-grown Navy SEAL could inflict on a twenty-year-old idiot.

Dustin’s sly smile had vanished, replaced with a drained-of-blood look of near panic.

Finally, unable to stand it another second, Brittany started toward them.

“…so much as look at her funny, I will come and find you, do you understand?” Wes was saying as she approached.

Dustin looked at her. Andy looked at her. But Wes didn’t look away from Dustin. All that intensity aimed in one direction was alarming.

She wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. “Everything okay?” she said brightly.

“Do you understand?” Wes said again, to Dustin.

“Yes,” he managed to squeak out.

“Good,” Wes said and stepped back.

And Dustin was out of there.

“So,” Brittany said to Andy. “This is Wes Skelly.”

“Yeah,” Andy said. “I think we’re kind of past the introduction stage.”

Chapter 2

Remarkably, Brittany Evans didn’t jump down his throat.

Remarkably, she didn’t immediately demand to know what on earth would possess him to physically threaten a kid more than a dozen years his junior. Forget about the fact that he did it in front of her impressionable teenaged son.

In fact, she didn’t say anything about it at all.

Wes took that as a strong hint that he’d surely hear about it later.

But she’d merely talked about her sister’s current pregnancy and friends they had in common as they drove to a Santa Monica café, not too far from the house Brittany shared with her kid.

The questions didn’t come until they’d sat down to dinner, until they’d ordered and had started to eat.

“You surprised me back at the fieldhouse,” Brittany introduced the topic. The table was lit by candlelight, and it made her seem warmly, lushly exotic in a way that her little sister would never look. Not in a million years.

Wes used to think that Melody was the prettier of the Evans sisters, and maybe according to conventional standards she was. Britt’s face was slightly angular, her chin too pointed, her nose a little sharp. But catch her at the right moment, from the right angle, and she was breathtakingly beautiful.

Sex was not an option, he reminded himself. Yes, this woman was very attractive, but he wasn’t interested. Remember? He definitely had to deal with all the emotional crap rattling around inside of his own head before he went and got naked with someone who would want a real relationship rather than a happy night or two of the horizontal cha-cha.

The odds of her wanting a night of casual sex with him were pretty low to start with. She so didn’t seem to be the type. But even if he was wrong, those odds would slip down to slim-to-none after he told her the truth—that he couldn’t give her more than a night or two because he was in love with someone else. No, not just someone else. Lana Quinn. The wife of one of his best friends—U.S. Navy SEAL and Chief Petty Officer Matthew Quinn, aka Wizard, aka the Mighty Quinn, aka that lying, cheating, unfaithful sack of dog crap.

Brittany Evans was sitting across the table from Wes, gazing at him with the kind of eyes he loved best on women. Warm eyes. Intelligent eyes. Eyes that told him she liked and respected him—and expected the same respect in return.

Lana had looked at him—at all of the SEALs—like that.

“Yeah,” Wes said, since Brittany seemed to be waiting for some kind of response. “I kind of surprised myself back at the fieldhouse.” He laughed, but she didn’t join in.

She just watched him as she took a sip directly from her bottle of beer and he tried not to look at or even think about her mouth. The bottom line was that he liked her too much as a person to mess around with her as a woman, as hot as he found her. But if she were some random babe that he caught a glimpse of in a bar, he’d make a point to get closer, to see if maybe she might want some mutually superficial sex.

So, okay. He was man enough to admit it. If all things were equal, he’d throw Brittany Evans a bang. No doubt about it. Forget about Lana—because, face it, he had to. She was married, off-limits, verboten, taboo. He couldn’t have her, so he took pleasure and comfort wherever he could find it. And he kept his heart well out of it.

But things here were definitely not equal. Not even close. Brittany was Lt. Jones’s sister-in-law, which was probably even worse than if she were his sister. A sister wouldn’t tell a brother about a night of hot sex with a near stranger. Well, probably not. But a sister just might tell a sister. Provided the two sisters were close. Which Brittany and Melody certainly were.

And word would definitely get back to Jones, which wouldn’t be good.

No, this was not going to happen, not tonight, not ever. Which, on that very superficial and completely physical level, was a crying shame. He would have liked, very much, to see Brittany Evans naked.

“What did he say to you?” she asked, looking at him in that way she had—as if she was trying to see inside of his skull and read his mind. Good thing she couldn’t. “Melero, I mean.”

“That kid is a total…” Wes chose a more polite word. “Idiot.”

Brittany smiled at him. “That’s not what you were going to say.”

“I’m working hard to keep it clean.”

“I appreciate that.”

God her smile was a killer. Wes forced himself to stop cataloging everything he wasn’t going to do to her tonight. Enough self-torture already. He brought the conversation back on track. “Melero was just being a jerk. That’s another good word for him—jerk.”

“I’ve met him plenty of times before,” she countered, narrowing her eyes slightly. “I’m well aware that he’s capable of extreme jerkdom. But Andy knows that, too. What exactly did this guy say to Andy to piss him off like that?”

“It was about a girl,” Wes said, unsure just how much to tell her.

“Dani?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“She’s Andy’s girlfriend.”

“I gathered that,” he said.

“What did he say?” she persisted.

Wes paraphrased and summarized. He’d heard quite a bit this afternoon that he didn’t want to repeat. It really was none of his business. “Melero told Andy that he’d, uh, you know, slept with her. Only, he put it a lot less delicately.”

“I’m sure.” Britt let out an exasperated laugh. “And Andy didn’t just walk away? What a lunkhead. That girl is devoted to him—she thinks he makes the sun rise. She’s a nice kid. A little low in the self-esteem department in my opinion, but, okay, she’s still young. Maybe it’ll come. I just hope…” She shook her head. “I’m not sure she’s right for Andy and I’d really hate for her to get pregnant. I preach safe sex pretty much nonstop. He just rolls his eyes.”

“Yeah, well, you can cross that off your list of things to worry about, at least for right now.” Wes finished his beer before remembering he’d planned to make it last all through dinner. Crap. “Apparently Dani is all about taking it really slow.” Ah, hell, why not just tell Brittany all of it? It wasn’t his business, but clearly this wasn’t something Andy would bring up in a conversation with his mother. “She’s a public virgin.”

Brittany put down her fork. “Excuse me?”

“She’s a virgin, and apparently she’s not afraid to tell people—you know, make it public knowledge that she has no intention of messing around before she’s good and ready.”

“Well, you go girl! Good for her. I had no idea she had that much backbone.”

“But now Melero’s telling everyone he popped her cherry and—” Holy God, what was he saying? And to Lt. Jones’s sister-in-law, no less. “Look, he was beyond crude, okay? When I heard what he’d said, I wanted to throw him up against the wall myself.”

“You did.”

She was looking at him so pointedly, so like the way Mrs. Bartlett, his third grade teacher had looked at him, he had to laugh. Man, he hadn’t thought about Mrs. B. in years, God bless her. “Yeah,” he said, “no. I didn’t do that until he said the other thing.”

“Which was…?”

She wasn’t going to like this. “I went into caveman mode,” he apologized first. “I’m sorry I did that in front of your kid. That was the wrong message to send, but when that little cow turd started laughing and saying you were hot, and that you were next on his list…”

Brittany looked surprised for about half a second. Then she laughed. Her eyes actually sparkled. “Sweetie, that was just a schoolyard taunt. And your mother, too…You know? This boy is a total jerk and a bully, but he’s not any kind of a real threat. And even if he was, I could take care of myself. Believe me.”

“Yeah, I picked that up from you right away,” Wes said. “And I told him that.”

“After which you told him you were a Navy SEAL and if he so much as breathed in my direction, you were going to…what?”

Wes scratched his chin. “I may have mentioned something about my diving knife and his never having offspring.”

She laughed again. Thank God. “That must’ve been when he looked like he was going to faint.”

“How is everything?” The waiter was back, but the place was crowded and he didn’t wait for an answer. He deftly removed the empty beer bottles from the table. “Another?”

“Yes, please.” Brittany smiled up at the guy, and Wes said another short prayer of thanks that his knee-jerk treatment of Melero hadn’t made her decide not to like him.

“Sir?”

“Yeah. Wait! Make it a cola.”

“Very good, sir.” The waiter vanished.

“I’m trying to cut back,” Wes felt the need to explain as the warmth of her gaze was focused back on him. “One beer a night. Two becomes six a little too easily these days, you know?”

“I appreciate it,” Brittany said. “Especially since you’re driving.”

“Yeah, well, I’m a sloppy drunk. It’s not pretty. It’s definitely not a good way to make new friends.” Why the hell was he telling her this? He didn’t even talk with Bobby about his fears of becoming an alcoholic, and Bobby Taylor was his friend and swim buddy from way back. “This is a very interesting first date. We talk about your son’s sex life and my potential drinking problem. Shouldn’t we be talking about the weather? Or movies we just saw?”

“It finally stopped raining, thank goodness,” Brittany said. “I just rented Ocean’s Eleven and loved it. When did you quit smoking?”

Damn. “Two days ago. What’d I do? Pat my pocket, searching for my nonexistent pack?”

“Yup.”

Crap. He resisted another urge to reach into his pocket. Not that he could’ve had a cigarette until later. This restaurant was smoke free.

“It must be driving you crazy,” Brittany observed. “To stop smoking and cut back on your drinking all at the same time.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve tried to quit before, I don’t have a whole hell of a lot of faith in myself. I mean, the longest I’ve gone without a cigarette is six weeks.”

“Have you tried the patch?”

“No,” he admitted. “I know I probably should. I don’t know, maybe the idea would appeal to me more if I could get Julia Roberts to glue it to my ass.”

Brittany laughed. “Maybe not smoking would appeal to you more if you had a girlfriend who told you that kissing you after you smoked was similar to licking an ashtray.”

He forced a smile. “Yeah, well…” The woman he wanted to be his girlfriend was married. He didn’t want to think about the one time he did kiss her. As easy as it was to talk to Brittany, he couldn’t talk about Lana. This was a date, after all, not therapy.

Not that he’d managed to talk to the team shrink about Lana, either, though. The only talking he’d done was when he was completely skunked.

The waiter brought their drinks to the table and vanished again. Wes took a sip of his soda and tried to like it, tried not to wish it was another bottle of beer.

“My ex used to smoke,” Brittany told him. “I tried everything to get him to quit, and finally drew a line. I told him that if he was going to smoke, he couldn’t kiss me. And he said okay, if that’s what I wanted.”

Wes knew what was coming from the rueful edge to her smile.

“So he stopped kissing me,” she told him.

The adjectives he used to describe the bastard were blistering—far worse than anything that had come out of Dustin Melero’s mouth that afternoon, but she just laughed as he winced and apologized.

“It’s all right,” she said. “But cut him some slack. He wasn’t entirely to blame. You know, he smoked when I married him, so it was pretty unfair of me to make those kinds of demands. Bottom line, sweetie, is that you’ve got to quit smoking because you want to quit smoking.”

“Or at the very least, I’ve got to want Julia Roberts to glue the patch onto my—”

“Yes,” she said, laughing. “That might do it.”

“He was a fool,” Wes told her, reaching across the table to take her hand. “Your ex.”

The smile she gave him was stunning as she squeezed his fingers. “Thank you. I’ve always thought so, too.”

Brittany took a sip of her coffee. “Melody told me you had leave for a week—”

“Two,” Wes interjected.

“And that you were spending that time here in L.A. as a favor to a friend?”

“Yeah.” Wes Skelly had a nervous tell. Even sitting at the table, he was constantly in motion, kind of like a living pinball. He was always fiddling with something on the table. His spoon. The saltshaker. The tablecloth. His soda straw. But when he got nervous—at least Britt thought it was nerves he was feeling—he stopped. Stopped moving. Stopped fiddling. He got very, very still.

He was doing it right now, but as he started to talk, he started stirring the ice in his soda. “I’m actually here as a favor to the wife of a good friend. Wizard.” He glanced up at her, and she knew it was an act. He was working overtime to pretend to be casual.

“I don’t know if your sister ever talked about him,” he continued. “She may not know him. I don’t know. He’s with SEAL Team Six, and he’s always out of the country, so…Very hard to find. So he’s gone again, and his wife, Lana, she’s, you know, very nice, very…We’ve been friends for years, too, and…Well, she was worried about her sister. Half sister, actually. Her father’s second marriage, and…Anyway, Lana’s half sister is Amber Tierney and—”

“Whoa.” Britt held up her hand. “Wait a sec. Information overload. Your friend Wizard’s wife Lana’s—” Lana, who was very nice, “—half sister is Amber Tierney from High Tide?”

“Yeah.”

“Holy moly.” With her heavy schedule at school and exhausting rotations in the hospital, Brittany didn’t have time to keep up with the various TV and movie stars who made headlines in L.A. But Amber Tierney had been impossible to miss. She’d been TV’s current It Girl ever since her sitcom, High Tide, had first aired last September. “Her sister’s worried…that she’s making too much money…? That Tom Cruise wants to date her…? That—”

“She’s being stalked,” Wes finished for her.

Britt cringed. “Sorry. That is a problem. I shouldn’t have tried to make it into a joke.”

“I’m not sure how real the threat is,” Wes told her. “Lana says Amber’s shrugging it off, says the guy’s harmless, he wouldn’t really hurt her. But see, Lana’s a shrink, and some of this guy’s patterns of behavior are freaking her out. It’s a little too obsessive for her comfort level. So she called me, and…Well, here I am.”

Lana, who was, you know, very nice calls and Wes jumps all the way to L.A.? Oh, Wes, please don’t be having an affair with the wife of a friend. That was just too snarky and sleazy and downright unforgivable. You’re a far better man than that.

Brittany chose her words carefully. “I know Navy SEALs are very good at what they do, but…isn’t this a job for the L.A.P.D.?”

Wes finished his cheesecake, and he wiped his mouth on his napkin before answering. “Amber doesn’t want to involve the police. It would be instantly all over the news—especially the tabloids. Like I said, she thinks this guy’s harmless. So Lana asked me to come to L.A. and quietly check out Amber’s security system, make sure it’s good enough, make sure she’s really safe.”

“And the reason that what’s-his-name—Wizard—can’t do this is…?”

“He’s out of the country. He’s been gone for—I don’t know—ten of the past twelve months.”

“So Lana called you.”

“Yeah.” He wouldn’t meet her eyes.

“You must be really good friends,” Britt said. “I know you don’t get a lot of vacation time, and to spend some of it here, doing this kind of favor…”

“Yeah, well…” Again, no eye contact.

“Although, of course, Amber Tierney…Sheesh. She’s gorgeous. And currently single, according to the National Star. If you play your cards right…”

Wes laughed. “Yeah, right. No, thank you. That’s the dead last thing I need. And Amber—I’m sure she doesn’t need another idiot drooling over her.”

“You don’t think your friend Lana sent you here to set you up with her little sister?”

He looked up at her then, seriously taken aback. “God, what a thought.”

“Sisters do those kinds of things,” Britt said. “They know a single guy who’s really nice, they really like him a lot, they have a sister who’s single, too…”

He was shaking his head. “I don’t know…”

Are you sleeping with her? Brittany didn’t ask. That was definitely a question that required a friendship that was more than a few hours old. And even if she had known Wes for years, it was none of her business. She kept her mouth tightly shut.

Although, what better way to spend a few weeks with a lover? Husband is conveniently out of town ten out of twelve months a year, but the neighbors might notice if one of his best friends starts coming over for slumber parties. Little sister needs a brave Navy SEAL to check out her security system, so Wes toddles off to L.A. Whoops, there’s some kind of a problem, Lana comes to town to “help…” And gee, there they are. Wes and Lana in L.A., away from everyone who knows that she’s married to someone else, for two blissful weeks.

Ick. Britt hoped she was wrong.

The waiter brought the check, saving her from asking nosy questions.

As Wes looked it over, he took out his wallet.

Brittany opened her purse, too. “Let’s just split it right down the middle.”

“Nope,” he said, taking out a credit card, sliding it into the leather folder that held the bill and holding it up so the waiter could grab it on his way past. “This one’s mine.”

“Nuh-uh,” she disagreed. “This wasn’t a date.”

“Yes, it was,” he countered. “And actually, I think it was the nicest date I’ve ever been on.”

What a sweet thing to say. “Wow, you don’t get out much, huh?”

He laughed.

“Seriously, Wes,” she said. “It’s not fair that you should have to pay for my dinner just because my brother-in-law—”

“How about I let you pick up the tab next time?”

The waiter was back. “I’m sorry, sir. Your credit card’s expired. Would you like to use a different card?”

Wes swore as he looked at the credit card. “I only have this one.” Brittany opened her mouth, but he cut her off. “No, you’re not going to pay. I have cash.” He looked at the waiter. “You do take cash?”

“Yes, sir.”

He opened his wallet and just about emptied it. “Keep the change.”

“Thank you, sir.” The waiter vanished.

“Well, that was embarrassing.” He looked at the credit card again. “I thought they were supposed to send me a new card before the expiration date runs out.”

“What do you do with junk mail?” Britt asked.

He looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “I throw it away. What do you do with it?”

“Do you throw it away without opening it? Mailings from mortgage companies and insurance companies and…” She paused dramatically. “…credit card companies?”

“Ha. You think they sent me a new card but I threw it away without even opening it,” he concluded correctly. “Well, hell, aren’t I just too efficient for my own damn good?” He forced a smile as he put the expired card back into his wallet. “Oh well.”

Brittany suspected his expired card created a bigger snafu than he was letting on. “Where are you staying tonight?”

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll drive back to San Diego. I was going to stay at a motel, but…” He shook his head and laughed in exasperation. “I’m supposed to meet Amber pretty early in the morning over at the studio, so if I go home, I won’t have time for much more than a short nap before I have to turn around and come back to L.A.”

“If you want, you could sleep on my couch,” Britt offered.

He looked at her, and his blue eyes were somber. “You may want to learn to be a little less generous with men you just met.”

She laughed. “Oh, come on. I’ve been hearing about you for years. I seriously doubt you’re a serial killer. I mean, the word probably would’ve trickled down to me by now. Besides, what are your other options? Are you going to, like, sleep in your car?”

That’s exactly what he’d been planning to do. She could see it in his eyes, in his smile. “Seriously, Brittany. You really don’t know me.”

“I know enough,” she said quietly.

Wes sat there looking at her for many long seconds. She couldn’t read the expression on his face, in his eyes. If she were young and foolish and prone to thinking that life was like a romance novel, she would dare to dream that this was the moment when Wes Skelly fell in love with her.

Except they’d agreed that there wasn’t going to be anything romantic between them, she wasn’t his type, he was definitely connected in some way to the wife of his good friend Wizard, and Brittany didn’t really want anyone to be in love with her. She had too much going on with school and Andy’s college and getting used to living on the west coast and…

Maybe the man just had gas.

“Okay,” he finally said. “Your couch sounds great. Thank you. I appreciate it very much.”

Brittany stood up, briskly collecting her purse and her sweater. “You can’t smoke inside the house,” she told him as he followed her to the door.

“I told you, I quit.”

She gave him a pointed look, and he laughed. “Really,” he said. “This time is going to be different.”

Chapter 3

“Hey, Andy,” Brittany called as she opened the door to her apartment.

“Hey, Britt,” her adopted son called back. “How’d it go with the load?”

Brittany looked at Wes, laughter in her eyes. “Um, sweetie?” she called to Andy. “The, uh, load came home with me.”

Wes had to laugh, especially when she added, “And he ain’t heavy, he’s my brother.”

Her place was extremely small, but it was decorated with comfortable-looking furniture and bright colors. A living room, an eat-in kitchen, a hallway off the kitchen that led to the back where there were two bedrooms.

Britt had told him on his way over that even though the place was significantly tinier than their house in Appleton, Massachusetts, it had the essential ingredient to shared housing—the bedrooms were large, and she and Andy each had their own bathroom.

Andy emerged from the hallway, dressed down in shorts and a T-shirt, his feet bare, and his dark hair a mess. He was trying to play it cool, but the kid practically throbbed with curiosity.

“Hey,” he said to Wes. He looked at Wes’s overnight bag, and then at Brittany. “Isn’t this outrageously unusual.”

“He’s sleeping on the couch,” Brittany told him in her refreshingly point-blank manner. “Don’t get any ideas, devil child.”

“Did I say anything?” Andy countered. “I didn’t say anything.” He reached out to shake Wes’s hand. “Nice to see you again, sir. Sorry about the load comment.”

“It’s not sir, it’s chief,” Wes corrected him. “But why don’t you just call me Wes?”

Andy nodded, looking from Wes to Brittany with unconcealed mischief in his eyes.

“Don’t say it,” Brittany warned him, as she went to a living room trunk and removed sheets and a blanket for the couch.

“What?” Andy played an angel, giving her big, innocent eyes. But beneath the playacting was an honestly sweet kid, who genuinely cared for his mother.

Jeez, that was who Andy reminded him of. Ethan. Wes’s little brother. Ah, Christ.

“There was a credit card mishap,” Brittany told Andy, putting the linens on the coffee table. “And Wes needed a place to sleep. Since we have a couch, it all seemed to line up quite nicely. I have an extra pillow on my bed that you can use,” she told Wes, before turning back to Andy. “Wes is not a candidate.”

Wes couldn’t keep from asking. “A candidate for what?”

Andy was watching Britt, too, waiting to see what she was going to say.

She laughed as she led the way into the kitchen, turning on the light and taking a kettle from the stove and filling it at the sink.

“This proves it,” she said to Andy. “I’m going to tell him the truth, which I wouldn’t do if he were any kind of real candidate—not that there are any real candidates.” She turned to Wes. “Ever since I adopted Andy, he’s been bugging me to ‘get him a father.’ It’s really just a silly joke. I mean, gosh, who’s on the candidate list right now?” she asked the kid as she put the kettle on the stove and turned on the gas.

“Well, Bill the mailman just came out of the closet, so we’re down to the guy who works the nightshift at the convenience store….”

“Alfonse.” Brittany crossed her arms as she leaned against the kitchen counter. “He’s about twenty-two years old and doesn’t speak more than ten words of English.”

“But you said he was cute,” Andy interjected.

“Yeah. The way Mrs. Feinstein’s new kitten is cute!”

“Well, there’s also Dr. Jurrik from the hospital.”

“Oh, he’s perfect,” Britt countered. “Except for the fact that I would rather stick needles into my eyes than get involved with another doctor.”

“That leaves Mr. Spoons.”

“The neighborhood bagman,” Brittany told Wes. “Be still my heart.”

Wes laughed as he leaned again the counter at the other end of the kitchen.

“The reason the list is so lame,” Andy told Wes, “is because she won’t go out and meet anyone for real. I mean, once every few years someone sets her up with the friend of a friend and she grits her teeth and goes, but other than that…” He shook his head in mock disgust.

“The truth is, most men my age are loads,” Brittany said.

“The truth is,” Andy told Wes, “she was married to a real load. I never met the guy myself, but apparently he was a piece of work. And now she’s gun-shy. So to speak.”

“I’m sure Melody and Jones completely filled in Wes as far as my tragic romantic past goes,” Britt said to Andy as she rolled her eyes at Wes. “Don’t you have studying to do?”

“Actually Dani just called,” Andy said. “She’s coming over.”

“Oh, is she feeling better?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She sounded…I don’t know. Weird. Oh, by the way, the landlord called and said he was replacing the broken glass in your bathroom window with Plexiglas.” He grinned at Wes. “There’s a group of kids down the street really into stickball and they’ve managed to break that same window three times since we’ve moved in—which is pretty impressive.” He looked back at Britt. “The Plexiglas isn’t going to look too good, but the ball should bounce off.”

Brittany snorted. “Ten to one says that my bedroom window breaks next.”

The doorbell rang.

“Excuse me,” Andy said as he went into the living room.

“He’s a good kid,” Wes said quietly. “You should be very proud.”

“I am.” She opened one of the kitchen cabinets and took out a pair of mugs. “Want tea?”

He laughed. “SEALs aren’t allowed to drink tea. It’s written in the BUD/S manual.”

“BUD/S,” she repeated. “That’s the training you go through to become a SEAL, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Jones had a few pretty wild stories about something called Hell Week.”

Hell Week was the diabolically difficult segment of Phase One training, where the SEAL candidates were pushed to extremes, physically, emotionally and psychologically.

“Yeah, you know, I don’t remember much of Hell Week,” he told her. “I think I’ve blocked most of it out. It was hard.”

“Now, there’s an understatement.” Brittany smiled at him, and Wes wished—not for the last time this evening, he was sure—that he wasn’t sleeping on that couch tonight. Her smile was like pure sunshine—God, it was trite, but true.

“Yeah, I guess,” he said. “Like I said, I don’t remember much of it. Although, Hell Week was where Bobby Taylor and I finally stopped hating each other. The guy’s been my closest friend for years, but when we were first assigned as swim buddies—you know, we had to stick together no matter what during BUD/S—we hated each other’s guts.”

Brittany laughed. “I had no idea. Your friendship with Bobby is legendary. I mean, Bobby and Wes. Wes and Bobby. I keep expecting him to show up.”

“He’s on his honeymoon,” Wes told her.

“With your sister.” Her eyes softened. “That must feel really strange. It must be hard for you—your best friend and your sister. Suddenly it’s not Bobby and Wes, it’s Bobby and Colleen.”

It was amazing. Everyone who’d heard about Bobby’s marriage to Colleen had made noise like, how great was that? Your best friend gets to join your family. Wasn’t that terrific?

And yes, it was terrific. But at the same time it was weirder than hell. And Brittany had hit it right on the head. Wes’s entire friendship with Bobby had been based on the fact that they were two unattached guys. They shared an apartment, they shared a similar lifestyle, they shared a hell of a lot.

And now, while Wes didn’t quite want to call what he was feeling jealousy, everything had changed. Bobby now spent every minute he wasn’t on duty with Colleen instead of hanging out with Wes watching old, badly dubbed Jackie Chan movies.

Bobby and Wes had definitely turned into Bobby and Colleen—with Wes trailing pathetically along, a third wheel.

“Yeah,” he said to Brittany. “It’s a little weird.”

From out in the living room, Andy’s voice got loud enough for them to hear. “You can’t be serious!”

The kid didn’t sound happy, and Wes took a quick glance in his direction.

Andy was standing at the open door. His girlfriend hadn’t even made it into the living room. She was a pretty girl, with short dark hair, but right now her face was pinched and pale, and she had dark circles beneath her eyes.

“Will you please come in so we can talk about this?” Andy asked, but she shook her head. Her reply was spoken too softly for Wes to hear.

“What, so you’re just leaving?” Andy, on the other hand, was getting louder.

Wes stepped farther into the kitchen, attempting to give them privacy. Clearly this was not a happy conversation. It sounded, from his experience, as if Andy was getting the old dumparooney.

He looked at Britt who winced when Andy said, loudly enough for them to hear, “You’re just going home to San Diego—you’re not even going to finish up the term!?”

Again, the girl’s reply was too soft for Wes to hear.

“The biggest problem with having a small apartment,” Brittany said, as she poured hot water over the tea bag in her mug, “is that there’s no such thing as a private conversation.

“We could go for a walk,” Wes suggested. “You up for a walk?”

She put the kettle back on the stove, giving him another of those killer smiles, this one loaded with appreciation. “Absolutely. What I really wanted was iced tea, anyway. Let me get a warmer jacket.”

But as she went down the hall to her bedroom, the conversation from the living room got even louder.

“Why are you doing this?” Andy asked. He was really upset. “What happened? What’d I do? Dani, you’ve got to talk to me, because, God, I don’t want you to leave! I love you!”

Dani burst into noisy tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, finally loud enough for them all to hear. “I don’t love you!”

The door slammed behind her.

Oh, cripes, that had to have hurt. Wes met Britt’s worried eyes as she came back out into the kitchen. She’d obviously heard that news bulletin, too.

Andy was silent in the living room. He’d have to come past them to get to the sanctuary and privacy of his room.

And even if they were going to go for a walk, they’d have to go out right past him. If Wes were in Andy’s shoes, having to face his mother and her friend was the last thing he’d want after getting an I don’t love you response to his declaration of love.

“How about a tour of your bedroom instead?” Wes asked Brittany. If they went into her room and shut the door, that would give Andy an escape route.

“Yes,” she said. “Come on.”

She grabbed his hand and pulled him down the hall.

Her room was as brightly colored and cheerful as the rest of the place, with a big mirror over an antique dresser and a bed that actually had a canopy. As she closed the door behind them, Wes had to smile.

“Gee, I wish it was always this easy to gain entry to a beautiful woman’s bedroom,” he said.

“How could she break up with him like that?” Brittany asked. “No explanation, just I don’t love you! What a horrible girl! I never really liked her.”

They heard a click as Andy quietly went into his room and locked the door. The kid turned music on, no doubt to hide the noise he was going to make when he started to cry.

Brittany looked as if she was going to cry, too.

“Maybe I should go,” Wes said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” She opened her door and marched back into the kitchen and out into the living room where she started putting the sheets on the couch.

“I can do that,” Wes said.

She sat down on the sofa, clearly upset. “From now on, I’m going to screen his girlfriends.”

Wes sat down next to her. “Now who’s being ridiculous?”

Brittany laughed, but it was rueful and sad. “He was so damaged when I first met him, when he was twelve. He’d been so badly hurt, so many times—shuffled from one foster family to the next. No one wanted him. And now this…Rejection really sucks, you know?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Actually, I do. I mean, not on the scale that Andy’s faced it, but…So now you want to protect him from everything—including girls who might break his heart.” He shook his head. “You can’t do it, Britt. Life doesn’t work that way.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“He’s a terrific kid. For all the bad crap that happened to him in his life, he’s got his relationship with you to balance it all out. He’s going to deal with this. It’s going to hurt for a while, but eventually he’s going to be okay. He’s not going to come unglued.”

She sighed. “I know that, too. I just…I can’t help but want everything to be perfect for him.”

“There’s no such thing as perfect,” Wes said.

Except there was. Brittany’s eyes were a perfect shade of blue. Her smile was pretty damn perfect, too.

If she were any other woman on the planet, he would have given her a friendly, comforting hug. But he didn’t trust himself to get that close.

She exhaled loudly—a supersigh. “Well. I have to get up early in the morning.”

“I do, too,” he told her. “Amber Tierney awaits.”

Her smile was more genuine now. “Poor baby.” She stood up. “Towels are in the closet in the bathroom. Help yourself. I’ll get you that pillow.”

“Thanks again for letting me crash here,” he told her.

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

Chapter 4

Wes’s car was in the driveway in the late afternoon, when Brittany got home from her last class.

When she’d gotten up in the very early morning to go in to the hospital, she’d left a key on the kitchen table, along with a note telling Wes to help himself to breakfast and to feel free to come back when his meeting with Amber was over.

As she juggled her keys with the grocery bags she was carrying in from her car, he opened the door and took one of the bags from her.

He had his cell phone tucked under his chin, but he greeted her with a smile and a twinkle of his eyes as he carried the bag into the kitchen.

“Is there more?” he mouthed. He was wearing jeans, and he had a barbed wire tattoo encircling his left biceps, peeking out from the sleeve of his snugly-fitting T-shirt.

Dressed up in a sports jacket and nice pants, he looked like an average guy—with a thick head of pretty-colored hair and those dancing blue eyes working to cancel out his lack of height. But with some of his natural scruffiness showing, in jeans that hugged a world-class set of glutes and a T-shirt that clung to his shoulders and pecs, with his hair not so carefully combed, and that tattoo…He was eye-catching, to say the least.

“I can get it,” she said, but he shook his head and went out the door and down the wooden steps to the driveway. Wasn’t that nice?

She started unloading the groceries, and he returned with the last two bags.

He was still on the phone. “I know,” he said to whomever he was talking to. “I understand.” He paused. “No, I don’t think you’re crazy, although, you’re the shrink—you should know.” Another pause. “Look, I’m on the case. I’m going out to her place tonight—there’s some kind of party and…”

Even though he was talking to someone—and Brittany would’ve bet big money that it was his very nice “friend,” Lana—he helped by putting the milk and yogurt in the refrigerator, the frozen vegetables in the freezer.

“No, I only spoke to her for about fifteen minutes—while she was getting her hair done in her trailer,” Wes reported. “She said this guy’s just a fan who’s gone a little bit overboard. He’s no big deal.” Pause. “No, those were her words, not mine. I haven’t met the guy.” Pause. “Yeah, she mentioned that she came home last week and he was in her garage. She seems to think the only way he could have got in there was if he wandered in while she was leaving in the morning and hung out there all day, which is—yes, you’re absolutely right—it’s pretty freaky. I’m with you totally on that, and yeah, she seemed to talk about him as if he was some kind of stray animal—he wandered in. It’s more likely he snuck in. But she also said that he left immediately, as soon as she asked. And she didn’t get out of her car until he was out of there and the garage door was closed, so at least we know that your sister’s not a total brainless idiot.”

With all the groceries put in the various cabinets, he sat down at the kitchen table.

“Definitely,” he said. “I’m going out there tonight. I’ll look over her security system, and I’ll talk to her again. And I’ll call you soon, okay?” Another pause, then he added, “Yeah, you know, Lana, about Wizard…” Wes rubbed the bridge of his nose, right between his eyes. “Yeah. No, I haven’t heard from him. I was, you know, wondering if you had?” He laughed. “Yeah, right. Yeah, okay babe, talk to you soon.”

He closed his cell phone with a snap and very salty curse. “Sorry,” he said as he realized Brittany was still standing there. “God, I would sell my left…shoe for a cigarette.”

This time, Brittany couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “Are you sleeping with her?”

Wes met her gaze and there was something in his eyes that looked an awful lot like guilt. “Who, Amber? Of course not,” he said, but she knew he knew exactly what she was talking about.

Was he sleeping with Lana—who was very nice.

Britt just waited, watching him, and he finally swore and laughed, although there wasn’t any humor in it.

“No,” he said. “No, I’m not. It’s not…It’s never gone that far. It’s not going to, you know? I wouldn’t do that to Wizard.”

But he wanted to. He was in love with the woman. It had dripped from every word he spoke while on the phone with her.

Brittany’s heart broke for him. “Has it occurred to you that she might be taking advantage of you? I mean, asking you to come out to L.A. to do something she should be paying a private investigator to do…?”

“I had to take leave,” Wes told her. “The senior chief insisted. And believe me, coming down here was better than staying in San Diego with all that time on my hands. It’s not easy to be there—especially when Wizard’s away.” He laughed again, rubbing his forehead as if he had a terrible headache. “Yeah, like it’s easy to be there when he’s home. It sucks, okay? Wherever I am, 24/7, it really sucks. But it sucks even more when she’s a five-minute ride from my house.”

Brittany sat down across from him at the table. “I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah, well…” He forced a smile.

“You said…She’s a psychiatrist?”

“Psychologist,” he corrected her.

“Does she know you’re in love with her?” How could Lana not know? How could a trained psychologist not take one look at Wes and know without a shadow of a doubt that he was head over heels in love with her?

But, “No,” Wes said. “I mean, yeah, she knows I run hot for her, sure. I’ve done a few stupid things to give that away, but…She also knows that I’m not going to act on it. You know, my attraction to her. It’s not going to happen. She knows that.”

Brittany kept her mouth closed over the harsh words she wanted to say. Like, how could Lana use Wes as her errand boy like this, knowing that he’d do darn near anything for her? What kind of woman would take advantage of this kind of devotion from a man who wasn’t her husband?

Lana didn’t sound very nice to her. In fact, she sounded an awful lot like a snake.

“You know what the real bitch of it all is?” Wes asked. “I found out something today—from Amber—that’s really making my head spin. It’s…” He shook his head. “I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to hear this.”

Brittany sighed. “Do I look like I’m in a hurry to go someplace?”

He sat there, just looking at her, somber and weary of life’s burdens. This was a Wes Skelly that most people never got a chance to see. Britt realized that he hid this part of himself behind both laughter and anger.

“I’ve been caught in the middle for years,” Wes said quietly. “Between Lana and Wizard, I mean. Wizard—the Mighty Quinn—he doesn’t exactly include fidelity as part of his working vocabulary, you know what I mean?”

Britt did know.

“He’s been stepping out on Lana for years,” he continued, “and when I’ve called him on it, he’s got this ‘What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her’ kind of ha-ha-ha attitude about it. So there I am. Do I tell her? Do I not tell her? I was Wizard’s friend first, so I’ve kept my mouth shut, but it’s been driving me freaking crazy. Because if I tell her, it’s going to seem as if I’m doing it for selfish reasons, right? But today…”

He started fidgeting, straightening the napkin holder and the salt and pepper shakers.

“I was talking to Amber, you know, about this guy who’s been following her,” Wes told her, “and how Lana’s worried about him, and Amber, she says that Lana worries about everything.” He stopped fidgeting and looked up at her. “She said, that’s what happens when you have a lying, cheating dog for a husband. You worry about everything.”

He laughed. “I was, like, floored. I was, like, ‘How do you know about Wizard?’ And she looked at me like I was from Mars and said, ‘Lana told me.’” There was still shock and disbelief in his eyes. “All this time, I’m protecting Lana from the truth, protecting Wizard, too, and it turns out she knew.”

“My ex-husband was like Wizard,” Brittany told him. “He couldn’t keep his pants zipped. You learn to recognize the signs.”

“Just now, when I was talking to her on the phone, I wanted to ask her about it. I mean, why is she still with him? But what was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, Lana, so when’d you find out you’ve been sharing the Wiz with dozens of other women and why the hell do you put up with that?’”

“Maybe she hopes he’ll change,” Britt suggested. “Of course, if she does hope that, then she’s a fool. Men like that don’t change.”

Britt understood Wes’s confusion. Lana had to know that Wes could be hers with a snap of her fingers and a short trip to a surgical specialist—a divorce attorney who could remove her malingering growth of a husband from her otherwise healthy life.

It was so obvious that Wes would be like a pit bull when it came to a relationship. He would never be unfaithful. Boy, he couldn’t even be unfaithful to Wizard, in terms of their friendship.

Brittany had no doubt that Wes was going to love Lana until the end of time.

She was envious. If Lana got her head on straight and ditched Wizard for Wes, she was going to have that same, rare happily ever after that Melody and Jones had found.

“So now you know way more about me than you wanted to, huh?” Wes said with a rueful laugh. He stood up. “Well, at least I didn’t smoke for three days.”

“Oh, no you don’t.” Britt stood up, too, and blocked his way into the living room. “You are not going out to buy cigarettes. You are quitting. Even if I have to go buy a nicotine patch and stick it on you myself.”

That got a smile and a trace of sparkle back into his eyes. “That might be fun.”

“It goes on your arm,” she told him as he kept moving toward her. She kept backing up, too, all the way through the living room, until she bumped into the door. As she hit it, she spread her arms, as if sealing it closed. As if that would keep him from leaving. “I’m a nurse, remember? I know these things.”

“I’m dying for a cigarette,” he admitted.

“So what?” Brittany said. “There’re lots of other things in this world that you can’t have, either.” Including Lana. “Suck it up, Skelly.”

The door opened behind her with no small amount of force, whacking her hard on the derriere and pushing her forward. It was like being hit by a linebacker. She tripped on the throw rug and would have landed on her face if Wes hadn’t moved to catch her.

Brittany was nearly Wes’s height and she would’ve bet big money that his jeans had a smaller waist size than hers. But despite that, despite his being slight of stature and seemingly slender, the man was solid muscle. She didn’t even come close to knocking him over. But as a result of his catching her, she couldn’t have stood any closer to him if she’d tried.

At least not with their clothes on.

While Wes had caught her, she’d caught herself by grabbing him, too, and as Andy stood looking at them now from the front door, she had to unwrap her arms from around Wes’s neck.

“Oops. Sorry.” Andy started to leave, closing the door behind him.

“Wait!” Brittany untangled herself from Wes and pulled the door open. “I was just keeping Wes from buying cigarettes.”

Andy laughed. “Well, that’s one effective way to do it.”

Wes laughed, too. “I wish. But she was actually standing right in front of the door. You almost knocked her over, kid.”

“Sorry.” Andy didn’t sound sorry at all. In fact, he sounded entirely too cheerful. But it was definitely forced.

Brittany searched his face, wondering if he and Dani had patched things up.

“You’re staying here again tonight, right?” he asked Wes. “I mean, I hope you’ll stay again tonight. I was hoping we could maybe, I don’t know. Shoot some baskets or something.”

In guy-speak, or at least in Andy-speak, shoot some baskets meant talk.

And talking—man to man—was something Brittany couldn’t give to Andy. She turned to Wes. “Please stay.”

“Actually,” Wes said, “I spoke to my credit card company. They’re overnighting a new card to me care of a Mailboxes Plus office here in L.A. But I won’t get it until tomorrow. So I was hoping—”

“Terrific,” Brittany told him. “And actually, you can stay for as long as you like. Save the money you’d spend on a hotel, as long as you don’t mind sleeping on the couch. Just chip in a little for groceries.” She looked at Andy, unable to keep herself from asking. “Is everything all right? Did you see Dani?”

“Nah, she’s gone.” He was almost too flip, too unconcerned. Which meant he was terribly hurt. “She packed up her all her stuff and cleared out of her dorm room.” He laughed, but it sounded a little too harsh. “Apparently, after spending the past six months talking me into taking things slowly, she really did sleep with Dustin Melero.”

And what could Brittany possibly say to that?

Wes swore softly.

Andy went into the kitchen, apparently determined to move on. “What’s for dinner?”

He didn’t want to talk about Dani. Not now. Maybe not ever—not with Britt. But maybe it was part of the guy stuff he wanted to discuss with Wes.

She hoped so. “You tell me. It’s your turn to cook.” She followed Andy, pushing Wes ahead of her. “No cigarettes,” she told Wes sternly. “You can get through one more day.”

Andy put his backpack down on the kitchen table and opened the refrigerator. “Tonight we dine on…pasta.”

“Wow! What a surprise. You know, I just got some chicken. We could light the grill and—”

“You guys want to go out for dinner?” Wes interrupted. “Like in about an hour? Because I’ve been invited to this party where there’s going to be a buffet. The downside is we’ll have to get dressed up. But I’ve got to go check out Amber’s security system and I kind of promised I’d do it tonight.”

“Amber?” Andy asked. If he were a dog, his ears would have pricked up.

“Amber Tierney,” Wes told him. “Want to come to a party at her house tonight?”

Andy laughed, his enthusiasm a little more genuine. “Yeah. She’s only the hottest woman in America. You actually know her?”

“Amber’s sister—half sister, really—is a pretty good friend of mine.”

“Don’t you have homework?” Brittany asked Andy.

He looked at her. “Don’t you?”

“Of course.” She smiled. “Race ya to see how much of it we can get done in the next forty-five minutes.”

Andy grabbed his bag and bolted for his bedroom. “I don’t have a lot—the baseball team’s going to Phoenix tomorrow, remember?”

Brittany wasn’t too far behind him. “Race ya anyway.”

“I guess that’s a yes,” she heard Wes say as she closed her door.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.