SEALed With Love (DiCarlo Brides book 2) (The DiCarlo Brides) (27 page)

She definitely wasn’t like the other women he’d known.

He pushed away thoughts of Sage and focused on work. And he checked the clock all afternoon, waiting for when he could get her alone again.

“You look beat.” Sage found Joel stretched out on the sofa in his office a few hours later, his bad leg elevated with a bag of ice on his knee. From the look on his face, he hadn’t taken the prescription pain meds that morning, relying on something weaker that kept him more alert instead.

“Beat, or beaten?” He grabbed the ice pack and shifted to stand. “What are you doing up here in the middle of the afternoon?” Joel grabbed her hand, giving it a squeeze. “Just couldn’t handle going all day without talking to me?”

“We talked when I brought you lunch,” she reminded him.

“I remember, but I usually stop in to check on things around three, and look, it’s three-thirty.” He slid a hand onto her waist and drew her near. “Since I couldn’t come to you, you decided to come to me?” He sounded like the idea appealed.

“Actually, I came to take you home.” She accepted the soft, teasing kiss he bestowed on her and melted into him. She still couldn’t believe he’d finally stepped across his self-imposed line.

“Take me home? But you still have a couple hours of work.”

“My four-thirty canceled, and I decided to take off for the rest of the day.” She looked at how gray his skin had turned and saw the pain lines around his eyes. “Come on, sir. You need a little TLC and your bed.” It pained her to see him like this. Once they got to his place, he’d be able to really relax, maybe take something strong enough to dull the pain adequately.

“Oh? You want me in bed?” his voice was lined with innuendo.

“Right, because you’re insanely sexy when you look like death warmed over.” She led him toward the front of the building while he made a quick radio call to Mick to say he was leaving for the day.

 “Can I be less than man of steel for a moment?” Joel asked when they were seated in his Range Rover a few minutes later. His head lolled back against the headrest and he closed his eyes.

“Of course. Your secret is safe with me.” She stroked his cheek. She knew he must hate being so weak. The fact that he was willing to show that weakness with her was a great concession. She wasn’t going to take the compliment lightly.

“Then I’m glad you want to go home. I do need a break.” He tipped his head to see could see her, then reached over and wound a lock of her curls around his finger. “Does that make me a wuss?”

She grinned. “Oh yeah, you’re a total wuss. I’m not sure why I’m even willing to be seen with you in public.”

The corners of his lips twitched. “Sarcasm noted.”

Dinner was over and Sage had cleared away the dishes when Joel asked her to give him another foot rub. “Please, it really made me feel better last time,” he said.

She considered calling him a wuss, though it was patently untrue, but decided that their agreement that he had to talk about himself while she rubbed was well worth it. She got her supplies and removed his shoes and socks. “Tell me about your other girlfriends.”

“What?” His eyes widened, showing his surprise at the out-of-the-blue question.

“You know, women you dated before. You don’t have to give me nitty-gritties, but it would be good to know something. Have you ever been serious about someone? What happened to break things up? You know, the basics.” She brought over a basin of soapy warm water to wash his feet.

He chuckled nervously. “There’s not that much to say. I only dated one person seriously—or what someone might consider seriously. We went out for a few months, anyway.”

“How old were you?” Sage asked. If she had to pull it out of him, she would. She had to understand more about him, and from the clipped way he’d talked about his family, she thought a less-direct route might be more effective.

“Um, nineteen. Her name was Winter. She worked at a little café just off the base where I was stationed. She was nice, we got along great, but she wasn’t ready to get serious, said I wasn’t the settling-down type and she didn’t want to deal with a long-distance relationship that wasn’t going anywhere. When I shipped out, she said goodbye. The end.” He shrugged.

Sage watched Joel’s face as she patted his feet dry and wondered if he realized how much his eyes gave away. He acted like it didn’t matter, but she could tell he felt at least a little discontent in the way it all ended. “Was she right? There’s been no one else in the last decade? That was a long time ago.”

He shrugged again. “I don’t know if she was right. Probably. I was young and stupid and looking ahead to getting into SEAL training. I still hadn’t qualified yet, but I was doing everything I could to reach it. I dated other women on and off, no one steady. I know Navy life isn’t easy on a lot of the women who are left behind. It’s dangerous work and SEALs are gone a lot, more than most, probably.”

She nodded, wondering if they had met earlier, while he was still in the service, would she have been able to accept how much he would have been gone? Could she have accepted the risks of his job and carried on while he was out saving the world? Was his life here that much less dangerous?

“How about you?” he asked after a moment. “You never talk about old flames. You date anyone seriously?”

She shook her head. “I dated guys on and off, no one for very long. I don’t get out much—never did, even when I wasn’t watching over my shoulder all of the time. I had fun with you and your friends at the bar, but it’s not normally my scene.”

“No one? Not in all of these years?” He looked incredulous.

Sage considered her history a little. “There was one guy I dated for a few months. We went out eight or ten times, lunch, dinner, a few free concerts in the park. He always wanted me to dress different, cut my hair, stop talking about my radical ways. I finally dropped him. No one is good enough of a kisser to outweigh that kind of attitude.”

“I don’t think I want to hear about what a good kisser he or any other guy is.”

She chuckled, deciding it was time to change the subject. “What kind of things did you do as a SEAL?” When wariness entered his gaze, she clarified. “Again, in general terms, I’m not asking you to break any laws or whatever.”

It took him a moment to answer, and when he did, his words were deliberate, as though he didn’t want to reveal too much. “We trained for all kinds of scenarios. Parachute jumping, scuba diving, hand-to-hand combat, explosives, every kind of weapon available, and we worked as a team. Things worked when we counted on each other.

“I guess it was the first time I had people I could count on to watch my back, to be in my corner. I never had that at home. Grams cared and she worked hard to provide for me, what little she could manage with no education, but I don’t know. If someone at school said I did something wrong, she believed them, even when it was a lie. If a neighbor accused me of stealing, she believed them, not me. My friends and I hung out, protected each other, but we protected ourselves first. I didn’t have anyone to count on before the SEALs. They were my brothers.”

Sage felt tears rising in her eyes and fought to hold them back. He didn’t want her pity and it would be the worst things she could give him right now. She kept her face turned down so he wouldn’t be able to see her face while she worked on his feet. She swallowed hard, then tried to speak smoothly. “I can understand that, I guess. Everyone needs to feel like they belong. Why did you pick the Navy?”

He hesitated, studying for long enough that she was starting to wonder if he would refuse to answer, but then he started talking again. “I got caught by the cops for shoplifting when I was almost eighteen. My parole officer suggested looking at the military—three squares, roof over my head, a paycheck and a chance to get some training to have a real future. I was almost out of high school, Grams was dead, I was drifting, getting into things that could have gotten me killed instead of just a few months in jail.” He paused again. “Homeless, crashing on friend’s couches at night to keep from the bad crap that happened out there at night. It sounded like a good idea. And I liked the idea of being a SEAL, so I went for it. It saved me.” His eyes were intent on her, willing her to understand.

They stared at each other for a long moment, her hands gripping one of his feet as compassion swept through her. She blinked and realized her eyes were wet. “You’re amazing, you know that? I can’t imagine coming from almost nothing and managing to do so much with my life. You should have been a drug dealer on the corner or something. How did you become such an amazing man?”

He allowed one of his infrequent smiles, relief pouring off of him. “You don’t see me the way I am. You need to get rid of those rose-colored glasses, baby.”

“No glasses here. I have twenty-twenty vision.” She thought that he was the one who wasn’t seeing things right. How could he not realize how incredible his story was, that he had made himself the kind of man she could depend on and love.

“I’ve killed people, Sage. I’m everything you hate.” His voice had gone low and husky. “I know how hard any kind of violence is on you. I’m not exactly level-headed.”

“You killed in the line of duty, not out of malice. No, you’re not what I hate. You’re everything I admire.” She shook her head and looked at his feet again, rubbing in the massage lotion. “You’re strong. Inside, you’re strong. You’ve made something out of nothing. Me, I’m a wimp. I want to run away from the guy who’s chasing me. I had a stable home, parents who loved me, a brother I can count on and I’m just a wimp.”

Joel leaned forward and caught one of her hands, pulling her up and onto his lap, only wincing a little when she bumped his bad knee. “Don’t ever say that you’re a wimp because you want to get away from the man stalking you. That doesn’t make you a wimp, it makes you smart.” He caught her chin and lifted her face to his. “You’re a miracle to me, you know that? My burst of sunlight. And you’re stronger than you think.”

His lips covered hers and she wound her arms around his neck, snuggling against his chest. He held her tightly to him, his mouth traveling along her jaw line and down the length of her neck. She shivered and cocked her head to the side, allowing him better access. “I guess your foot rub is done,” she teased.

“For now anyway.” He touched her cheek, turning her face back toward his and took her mouth again.

“If you weren’t so impossible to please, you wouldn’t need another employee already.”

Sage would recognize her brother’s voice anywhere, and she wasn’t terribly surprised to hear Rosemary’s yelling back at him.