If he was in Coronado looking that fit and wearing those fatigues...
Did he go SEAL? And make it?
That meant he’d already survived breakout, the beginning of Hell Week. He’d crawled beneath machine gun fire as a fog machine pumped smoke across the terrain. He’d run the O-course and climbed the pyramid of Hooyah Logs until his legs shook. He’d made it through the brutal boat Olympics known as Lyon’s Lope and completed BUD/S—Basic Underwater Demolition training.
She knew what SEAL candidates endured. She’d researched the Warfare Center on their long drive from the East Coast.
It explained why he looked the way he did.
The baby SEAL’s gaze shifted from Mick to her.
Shee stopped, only then aware she’d been shuffling toward the men as if caught in a tractor beam.
“Jelly?”
She smiled, fighting to look normal. Her lips felt twitchy.
“Peanut Butter? What are you doing here?”
His chest puffed a little more, something she hadn’t imagined possible.
“Mason’s a SEAL now, awaiting his assignment,” said her father. He seemed happy to distract from her demands.
Nice try, old man.
She flashed her father a withering glance to inform him she wasn’t finished and hadn’t forgotten.
Mick shook his head in a way that said, don’t start.
Fine. Temporary truce.
Shee turned her attention back to Mason.
“So, uh, you’re here?”
Duh.
Mason chuckled, dimples now visible on both cheeks. “Yep. Your father helped me get into the Special Warfare Prep—”
Mick cut him short. “I didn’t do anything. It was all you.”
Shee’s gaze floated back to her father.
You’ve been in contact with Mason behind my back? I swear, I don’t even know you anymore.
Mick shook Mason’s hand again. “I’ve got to get going. Good job, son.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Mick waggled his fingers at them as he hurried off. “You two should go get a burger or something. My treat. Shee, you pay and I’ll get you back.”
Shee watched him retreat.
Coward.
“So, I guess you came with your dad?” asked Mason, strolling toward her like the gorgeous distraction he was.
Fine. Dad can wait.
Shee’s chin lifted to meet Peanut Butter’s eyes, way up there...
“Are you a SEAL?” he asked.
Shee giggled and rolled her eyes.
Since when do I giggle?
“Siofra.” He said her name. No question, just her name.
“You remember my name?” she asked.
He nodded. “It’s pretty. Different.”
“Pretty different,” she mumbled, pulling at the neck of her t-shirt to let the heat radiating from her body escape.
What the hell. I must be getting the flu.
“So you’re, uh, all done?” she asked.
“We’re never done.”
“No, I just meant—”
“Hey, what’re you doin’?” He blurted the sentence as if it had been building in his chest.
Alarmed, Shee looked down, afraid she’d done something weird without knowing. She seemed to be just standing there. “What? Why?”
“I mean, are you busy? I don’t have to be anywhere until thirteen hundred. Ya wanna grab a burger like your dad said?”
Shee’s bottom lip unstuck from her top but no sound emerged.
“That’s one o’clock,” he added.
She retracted her head as if he’d slapped her.
“I know. I’ve been Navy since I was nine.”
He laughed. “Oh excuse me. You must be an Admiral by now.”
She sniffed. “Honorary Captain.” She actually had made her father bestow unofficial ranks on her through the years. She’d only made imaginary Captain a week earlier, right before he broke the news about their assignment in Coronado.
Probably to shut me up.
Mason saluted. “Ah stand corrected, Captain, ma’am. We can go to McP’s over on Orange if that sounds good?”
She hadn’t wanted him to stop talking. His southern accent was adorable. It took a moment for her to realize he was awaiting an answer.
“Oh, yeah. Okay.”
They fell into step beside each other, heading downtown, Shee pumping Mason for information about his SEAL training experiences, trying hard not to blurt out how’d you get so big? Everything about him was crisp and clean and smooth and hard, like a G.I. Joe doll come to life, if old Joe had joined the Navy instead of the Army.
Which he should have. Obviously.
“What was the worst part?” she asked.
He chuckled. “It was all the worse part.”
“But if you had to pick something?”
He shrugged. “Drownproofing, probably.”
“Where they try to drown you in the pool?”
“More or less.”
“I thought that sounded like the worst. I’m going to do it, you know.”
“What?”
“I’m going to do SEAL training.”
He laughed. “You can’t. You’re a girl.”
She scowled. “I’m going to train myself.”
“I dunno if that’s the same.”
“Oh, it’ll be worse. I’m very hard on myself. A real tyrant.”
He laughed. “I bet.”
He was still chuckling as they took a seat on the patio of McP’s Irish Pub. He looked happy. She guessed she’d be happy, too, if for the first time in a while people weren’t demanding she crawl on her belly through the sand into the freezing ocean.
“So what have you been up to?” he asked.
She shrugged. “Same as when I met you. Skip tracing and bounty hunting for the Navy with my father.”
He chuckled. “No, really.”
“Really.”
“You’re telling me you’re a bounty hunter for the Navy?”
“Yep.”
The waitress arrived to take their order, and Shee realized she hadn’t been reading the menu, just staring at it. The waitress blinked at her, waiting.
“I’ll get a cheeseburger,” she said.
The waitress scribbled on her pad.
“Same, but two,” said Mason, holding up a peace sign. “And a beer.”
“Me too,” added Shee.
The waitress side-eyed her.
“You twenty-one?”
“Yep. Two days ago.”
The waitress nodded and left as Mason leaned back, tapping the table with his fingers. “Cool.”
“What?”
“I always wondered what bounty hunters eat.”
“Funny. I always wondered what SEALs eat.”
He leaned in, flashing his blue eyes
