Surprise wafted over me. “You were?”
More silence, and then she said, “I feel like I pushed you into this job, and now you got hurt.”
I almost had to smile because it was really Bee making it about her again, trying to lessen her own guilt. I said, “You didn’t push me into this job. You didn’t even know about it.”
“But I was all over you to get a job.”
She had been.
“You just wanted what was best for me,” I told her, swallowing back my initial reactions.
“I did. I do. Are you going to be okay?”
The last thing I wanted was my family to continue to worry about me. “I am. Nash is down here fixing the security problems.”
“Nash?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know, Mac’s SEAL buddy.”
“Is he the blond or the dark, tattooed one?” Bee asked, and I wanted to strangle her for not knowing. For not remembering that the blond she was talking about was dead and that she’d just had drinks with his widow barely a month ago. For not remembering that the “dark one” had barely escaped with his own life.
“The tattooed one,” I retorted drily. “He’s the one that didn’t come home in a body bag.”
“God, don’t get all snippy. I’m sorry I don’t remember all your and Mac’s friends. It’s not like I deal with any of those people on a daily basis.”
She was getting her back up, and I sighed. She was clueless, but she’d called to check on me, and that said more about our relationship than anything. We loved each other, even when we couldn’t always stand each other.
“I know, Granola Fart,” I said quietly. “Thanks for checking on me.”
“Don’t get dead, Gooberpants. Who else would I have to fight with?” she teased, but there was a sentimentality behind the words I normally didn’t hear when she talked to me.
“Thomas. You love fighting with him,” I told her with a small grin and was rewarded with her snort.
“True. That man makes me boil and burn all at the same time.”
I grimaced. “I’m not sure I want to hear about your sex life, Bee.”
She chuckled more. “Someday you’ll find your own ignition switch, and you’ll completely understand.”
Which only brought to mind the man who’d already ignited me. Whose face I’d slammed the door on. A face I didn’t want in front of me as I tried to unwind and go to sleep.
After Bee and I hung up, I searched the channels for something that would let me forget the world for a little while, but nothing kept my attention for long until I ended up on the Discovery channel. It was a show that just so happened to be on the renowned Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training. It was a living hell for those who went through it. The show had been filmed for the anniversary of the creation of the Navy SEALs.
I rolled my eyes at the coincidence. Fate was talking to me tonight, meaning I couldn’t escape Nash. Plus, the show had already pulled me in. Even my desire to fling more doors in Nash’s face couldn’t alleviate the awe I felt watching the program. Not only because of the physical endurance required of them but the mental fortitude. Their loud “hooyahs” echoing around the darkened room gave me goosebumps. Finishing the intense seven months of training was only the beginning. They didn’t even get their Tridents—or birds, or Budweisers, as they were nicknamed—until they’d completed months more of post-training and had gone before the Trident board.
The show didn’t talk about the sniper training, but I knew, from a life spent as the daughter of a Navy man, that snipers were the best of the best. Sniper school took the elite SEAL requirements and amped them up another thousand percent, and even then, not everyone who signed up passed the training. It made me more curious than I wanted to be about snipers—and one particular sniper—and I found myself scouring the web for books. I came up with a handful. It was a much-debated topic on whether a SEAL was betraying his brothers by talking about the teams, their missions, and their consequences, but I was glad I could download a few to read.
For some reason, my damn body and brain wanted to understand the man who had gotten under my skin like no one else. I hated that it made me feel as if I were still a teenaged ugly duckling trying to be noticed as she drooled after Bee’s boyfriend. I thought I’d put those feelings of inadequacy behind me in college, after I’d lost the braces and my gawkiness and found men who were interested in me as much as I was interested in them.
But not a single one of those men had ever heated me to the point where all I could think about was their hands on my bare skin. Nash did that by just glancing in my direction. It was ridiculous. I hated it, but I didn’t, and it gave me a new appreciation for Bee and Thomas’s relationship that I’d never had before.
I fell asleep reading one of the books, which only allowed thoughts of a tattooed body to follow me into my dreams.
Nash
TROUBLE
“The thought of all the stupid things I've done.
And I never meant to cause you trouble,
And I never meant to do you wrong.”
Performed by Coldplay
Written by Berryman / Buckland / Champion / Martin
Tanner was a fucking idiot. I’d had to take a break from him and his nonsense as he’d argued endlessly with Garner about me being there rather than letting me do the job I’d come to do, which was to improve the entire detail. His ego was twice the size of any SEAL or Ranger I’d ever met, and he didn’t have any of that behind his name. A four-year stint in the army. That was it.
Leaving the room, I’d found my way to Dani’s door, determined to convince
