SEALs of Summer 2: A Military Romance Superbundle (97 page)

Shane sat next to Lieutenant Junior Grade Max Foster, who was five years Shane’s junior but considered his superior by rank. Most of the Eighters were around Max’s age, and although Shane couldn’t deny that his boys were wilder than a lot of the other soldiers on base, he didn’t mind their antics. All that mattered to him was that they could be counted on in the field—and they could. Every last one of them added something to the team, and during an op, the boys exemplified single-minded focus and deadly precision.

At the moment, however, their heads were most certainly not on fieldwork.

“So we go back to her place, and we’re both a little tipsy,” Ensign Hunter Clark was saying.

“Tipsy? Ha. Try wasted,” Duke Donovan piped up. A petty officer, Duke was joined at the hip with Hunter, so much so that the two hound dogs even finished each other’s sentences.

Hunter was quick to deny the allegation. “I was still walking in a—”

“Straight line?” Duke supplied, his blue eyes gleaming. “Bull-fucking-shit, brother. I saw you leave the bar. Swaying and rocking like a seesaw.”

“Fine. I was wasted.” Hunter glared at his best friend. “But still functional enough to rock that chick’s world.”

“Mmm-hmmm. Why don’t you tell everyone how you rocked it?” Duke taunted. “I dare you.”

Sighing, Hunter turned to address the others. “Fine. It didn’t go exactly as planned.”

Shane hid a smile. Hunter and Duke’s stories were notoriously raunchy, and even though he hadn’t heard this particular one before, Shane suspected it wouldn’t end with roses and rainbows and happily ever after.

Next to him, Max chuckled. “What, did you hurl on her while you were doing the nasty?”

“I wish,” Hunter mumbled.

“Oh no, it’s even better than that,” Duke crowed. He jabbed a finger at his buddy. “Please, good sir. Do go on.”

Hunter flipped his middle finger, but kept talking. “So we’re fooling around on her bed—which, by the way, is covered with stuffed animals.”

Everyone snickered.

“For real?” their Southern lothario, who’d been dubbed Lancelot, said with a horrified look.

“For real. Pink bunnies and teddy bears and a ton of other creepy stuffed things that were staring at me the whole time. Freaked me right out.”

“Dude, and you were still able to get it up?” Drew Olsen, the rookie of the team, sounded highly impressed.

“She was smoking hot,” Hunter replied with a shrug. “Besides, if I closed my eyes, I didn’t have to see ’em. Anyway, it’s getting hot and heavy, and I know it’s time to unleash my God-given talents—”

Grumbles rang out all around him.

“—and blow her mind with some Hunter-grade oral,” he finished.

More groaning ensued. Someone threw a rolled-up magazine at him.

Grinning, Shane glanced at the seat across from him and found their sniper extraordinaire, Wyatt Connor, blinking innocently at him.

“So I’m doing my thing, getting her close to the best orgasm of her life, and—” Hunter stopped abruptly, his expression going glum.

“Don’t stop now,” Duke ordered. He looked around the chopper, wiggling his eyebrows. “This is the good part, guys.”

“Just let me skip to the end,” Hunter objected. “
That’s
the good part.”

Shane felt an elbow poke into his side. “Make him talk, Senior,” Max begged.

“And kick his ass if he leaves anything out,” Lancelot chimed in.

It didn’t surprise him that the boys turned to him to solve the problem. He wasn’t an officer, but Shane had been around longer than most of the men, and they relied on him for guidance and leadership…or to whip others into shape. Max might be the XO on record—and he excelled in that post during ops—but Shane had always been the unofficial leader of the team thanks to all his years of service. And although it still freaked him out a bit that he was a father figure to men who weren’t that much younger than him, he’d accepted the role.

Nevertheless, he caught his commanding officer’s eye to gauge what the man thought of the vulgar discussion, but Nathan Walsh didn’t seem concerned by it. The CO was a hard-ass in the field, but he had a soft spot for his younger charges. He let them get away with almost anything—including locker room talk in the chopper, judging by the barely restrained grin on his face.

Shane leaned forward to shoot Hunter a severe glower. “Keep talking, Ensign.”

The younger man hesitated.

“And then what happened?” Shane said sternly.

After a long pause, Hunter’s response flew out in a turbo-speed rush. “She-called-out-someone-else’s-name.”

The confession set off a series of chuckles from the other men.

“Oh no, you don’t,” Duke said in delight. “Story’s not over, bro. Tell them the name she called out.”

Shane fought a laugh as Hunter closed his eyes like he was mentally picturing Donovan’s grisly death. The boys were nothing if not entertaining, no denying that.

“Come on, what was the name?” Max coaxed.

When Hunter’s mouth stayed shut, Shane intervened once more, utilizing his sharpest authority voice. “What was the name, Ensign?”

There was a beat.

Then, “It was Caitlin.”

Silence crashed over the chopper, Hunter squirming in his seat as every pair of eyes focused on him.

A second ticked by. Two…three…

Shane waited for it…

A wheezy snort sounded from Max’s vicinity.

And there it was.

The tiny sound unleashed an explosion of cackles that were probably heard from the ground thousands of feet below them. Even the pilots joined in, their loud chortles booming out of the cockpit and mingling with the deafening laughter of Shane’s teammates. Every single man was in hysterics, including the team’s CO, who had keeled over and was wiping tears from his eyes. On Shane’s other side, Lancelot’s entire body vibrated with mirth, shaking the row of seats.

“Holy shit, that’s fucking priceless,” Max choked out.

“Turns out she was bi,” Hunter told the group. He wasn’t laughing, but he looked as amused as his teammates. “She was at the bar because she got into a huge fight with her girlfriend—Caitlin—and she was trying to get back at her. But the second Caitlin’s name came up—”

“Came up?” Duke echoed with a snicker. “She called it out during orgasm!”

“When Caitlin’s name came up,” Hunter repeated firmly, “Mandy felt guilty as fuck, and then she started crying, and, well, you know me, I can’t stand to see a beautiful damsel in distress—”

The laughter dissolved into a new round of groans.

“—so we had a long heart-to-heart, and I convinced her to give Caitlin another shot.” Hunter’s voice went smugger than smug. “Mandy gave Caitlin a call, invited her over, and…”

“And what?” The curious demand came from none other than the CO.

Hunter’s lips twitched as he glanced at Walsh. “A gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell, sir.”

“You just did!” the burly man exclaimed in exasperation. “You might as well take us to the money shot.”

Hunter’s grin broke free. “Let’s just say there was a lot of makeup sex involved and I was smack in the middle of it.” He blinked innocently. “Did I mention Caitlin was bi, too?”

Max groaned. “Dude, you’re gonna land in a world of hurt one of these days. Seriously, next time the ex won’t be a girl. It’ll be a huge muscly monster who’ll barge in and skin you alive.”

“Ha, like
you
haven’t gotten into your share of trouble?” Hunter shot back. “You play it off like you’re Mr. Nice Guy, Foster, but we all know what a dirty boy you are.”

As the younger men launched into a heated debate about who was the biggest troublemaker, Shane chuckled and tuned them out. Which ended up being a bad idea, because the moment his focus strayed from the conversation around him, memories of the previous night came at him like a swarm of bees.

He’d kissed Jill.

Fuck. What had he been thinking?

If he’d just had the willpower to restrain himself, Jill would have accepted his claim—no, his
decision
—about not getting involved. But his damn body had betrayed him, he’d allowed lust to take the reins, and as a result, Jill had viewed it as a
challenge
.

The glint of determination he’d glimpsed in her eyes had left him rattled. Christ. He got the feeling she really wouldn’t let it rest.

But…maybe he was worrying for nothing. Maybe she
wouldn’t
look him up when she got to Virginia.

Which would be a travesty, you moron. The woman is a goddess.

He silenced the outraged voice in his head. Yes, Jill was beautiful. And interesting. And tantalizing as hell. But she deserved a man who had more to offer her, not an emotionally detached bastard who’d fuck her and then bid her goodbye.

The reminder stayed with him all the way back to Virginia, and the moment the chopper landed at the naval base Shane left the other men and headed home. Though
home
wasn’t exactly what his empty house in Norfolk felt like anymore, not without Alana living there.

The two of them had fixed up the house together. Painted it, decorated it, picked out all the furniture. Their relationship had been a partnership from day one, and Shane knew that’s why it had worked so well.

He missed her. Fuck, losing her had been like losing an arm—you
always
felt the loss. You stared down at the place where the limb was supposed to be, but it wasn’t there, and nothing you did could ever bring it back.

It happened to him every second of the day. He woke up in the morning and reached for his wife’s soft, warm body, but it wasn’t there. He searched for her curly brown-haired head when he walked into the living room, but it wasn’t there.

She
wasn’t there.

Swallowing a lump of sorrow, he parked his SUV in the driveway and strode inside, where he stopped only to kick off his boots before marching to the bathroom and cranking on the shower faucet.

It felt good to be back in Norfolk, but truth be told, he was looking forward to the team’s next deployment. Once he was OCONUS, it would be easier not to think about Alana.

His empty house.

His empty life.

But he had three months stateside before deployment, which meant it was time to kick into high gear, focus on the training, and block everything else out. He couldn’t allow himself to think about Alana, not unless he wanted to say hello to rock bottom again.

Except, as he dunked his head under the spray and let the warm water slide down his body, he was startled to realize that it wasn’t his wife he was thinking about.

It was Jill.

*

A week after
her encounter with Shane Heron, Jill looked around her brand-new apartment and assessed her handiwork. Since she wasn’t one to procrastinate, she’d spent her first weekend in Norfolk unpacking and getting settled. Most of her furniture would be arriving with the moving truck in a few days, but she’d gone out and bought a few things, including a new bedroom set because her old one sucked and her mattress had been too lumpy to justify shipping across the country.

She wandered around the room, admiring the four-poster bed and scarlet bedspread, and the new bookshelves that were eagerly awaiting the boxes of books that would arrive with the truck. She was tired from unpacking, but it was barely eight o’clock, and she worried that if she took a nap now, she’d end up going down for the night and waking up at the crack of dawn.

Well, eff that. Tomorrow was Sunday, and probably her last chance to sleep in. Come Monday, her life would be pure chaos. She had to interview wait staff, meet with the chefs to plan the menu, touch base with the publicist she and Drake had hired to organize their grand opening.

God, she was so excited for it, but insanely nervous, too. One bad customer experience on opening night, or worse, a negative review from a food critic, could torpedo a new establishment before it even got off the ground. Jill had seen too many restaurant owners excitedly open their doors only to go out of business a few short months later. Well, no way would she allow that to happen to her place. She planned on working her ass off to make Hampton Grill a huge success.

She flopped down on the edge of the bed, deciding against taking a nap, but that didn’t leave her with many other entertainment options. Her Internet wasn’t hooked up yet, she didn’t own a TV, and the only books on her e-reader were ones she’d already read. Which meant she could either stare at the ceiling for the rest of the night, or go out and explore the city.

Or…there
was
a third option. She could always give Shane a call.

She’d grabbed his number off Carson before she’d left San Diego, and it was already programmed into her phone, practically begging to be dialed.

He said he wasn’t interested.

The pessimist inside her was quick to voice the reminder, but her optimistic side rapidly swept in with a counter argument—
he kissed you.

Oh, he’d kissed her, all right. She still remembered how firm his lips had been, the way his tongue had explored her mouth with the kind of skill and confidence that only a man with a lot of kissing experience could possess. She remembered every last detail about him. Those piercing eyes, dark blue with flecks of silver around the pupils. His reluctant smiles. His husky voice.