I dragged a hand over my scar. I was doing nothing right with any of the women in my life these days. Those thoughts had me storming back into Tanner’s room and demanding I be given access to every bit of security they had as well as any intelligence on the stalker.
“Have you signed the nondisclosure agreement?” Tanner asked with a smug grin, knowing I hadn’t, because nothing had changed in the twenty minutes since I’d left the room.
Brady’s manager, Lee, was working on getting it updated or some shit like that. I had one of the highest security clearances there was to give in the military, and yet, this guy wanted to hold back vital intel because I hadn’t signed my name on a legal piece of garbage. I tried to keep my cool.
“Fine, keep the shit about Fiona Ross, but I need access to every other aspect of this detail. If I’m going to be sticking around, I’ll need to modify more things than the basics.”
His entire posture tightened, and he stared at me with narrowed eyes.
He handed me a sheet of paper with their websites, passwords, and high-level coverage plan. “You have this on paper? Where it can easily be found?”
He rolled his eyes. “I printed it out for you. From our encrypted site. Shred it when you’ve done whatever you SEALs do with the data.”
His disparagement of my military family was enough to cause my temperature to go up a couple of notches, but what it meant was that he hadn’t qualified for the Rangers. He hadn’t qualified for any special ops, and he was butthurt over it. I’d seen it a million times since getting my Trident.
I left him and his shitty attitude for my room where I spent most of the night going through their personnel files and their plans. I made notes, typing up a document I sent off to Garner and Tanner in the early hours.
After, I tried to get some sleep, but it was pretty much hopeless.
When the light was starting to break into the dark sky, I donned my workout gear, heading down to the hotel fitness center to see if I could eke out some of my tightness by putting my body through the paces. What I found had me freezing in my tracks. Dani. Her back to me, legs pumping, earbuds in as she stared at the track on the electronic screen attached to the bike. Her butt was shifting on the seat, her back glistening.
It was heaven and hell.
She sat up as the course ended. She was in another one of those half workout tanks like the one she’d worn when we’d played strip poker together, and that image did all the wrong things to the body I’d told to stand down weeks ago. She stretched her arms, which made every muscle on her back pull taut as she got off the bike and then proceeded to bend over to stretch her legs, putting her toned butt right in my line of vision.
Damn. This was going to be harder than I’d thought. Keeping my distance from her. Doing the right thing by her and Mac and me. I was a fucked-up SEAL who had too many things to set right, and even then, I’d still be a SEAL. I’d still be the person who would leave and might come back in a body bag. Tristan’s words from the other night weren’t going anywhere. She’d asked Darren to quit, and he hadn’t. There was no way in hell I could do that to anyone. It only added more reasons to the endless stack of why I couldn’t do a relationship, and Dani deserved a relationship with whomever she let in her bed.
She deserved more than just wild nights of sex.
Dani wiped at her sweat with a towel, drank down half a bottle of water, and then turned toward the workout bench. She finally caught sight of me, and her hand flew to her heart, eyes going wide.
“Holy shit, you have to stop doing that,” she said.
“Why are you here without one of the detail?” I asked because it was the one thing I could focus on rather than her toned body, hot and sweaty in ways that just continued to remind me of our night together.
She bristled, and I barely held back my smirk.
“Why would I need a bodyguard? It’s Brady who does,” she said dryly.
She went to the weight machine, adjusted the dial, and sat down, ready to do a series of overhead presses. My curiosity got the better of me, and I moved over to take a look at the setting.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“What does it look like?” she said, breathing in and out as she lifted the bar, opening up her chest and causing the muscles I could see contract and expand in the most beautiful way.
I couldn’t keep my eyes from dragging over her, starting with her arms above her head, down to her shoulders, continuing down to where her breasts were pushed out as she lifted. She met my gaze when I reached her eyes again, and the heated look there was almost more than I could stand before she closed them against me, hiding her reaction as much as I was trying to hide mine. I shifted my eyes to the setting she’d chosen.
“Do you always use this much tension?” I asked, voice going down an octave.
“Why?” she asked full of Dani’s sass and storm.
“It’s impressive,” I told her the truth. I shifted so I was leaning on the bar she wasn’t lifting, and it drew my body closer to hers.
She snorted, deflecting the compliment. “Just because you’ve
