Desire in D.C.: An Opposites Attract Romantic Suspense (Hot SEALs)
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DESIRE IN D.C.
A Hot SEALs Series Origin Story
CAT JOHNSON
New York Times & USA Today Bestselling Author
Peter Greenwood expected to have to work hard and prove his worth to rise in the ranks of politics. What he didn't expect was that he’d have to work so hard to get his dream girl.
Martha "Marty" Vanderbilt and Peter are opposites in every way. She's rich from old family money and he couldn't be more middle class. She's a liberal journalist and he's an aide for a Republican senator. She's loud and opinionated and he mostly keeps his mouth shut and his head down.
But sometimes opposites attract so strongly, there's nothing that can keep two people apart. Not even a deadly terrorist hijacking . . .
Long before he became the Senator from Virginia, long before his daughter Missy fell in love with and married Navy SEAL Zane Alexander, Peter Greenwood was a young, driven legislative aide in Washington D.C. during the turbulent 1970s trying to build a career and earn the heart of a woman. Read how it all went down in this Hot SEALs series origin story.
CHAPTER ONE
“There she is.” The sharp jab of an elbow to his ribs got Peter’s attention as much as his buddy Tim’s statement had.
In response to Tim’s comment, Peter pointedly glanced around them, peering through the swirling haze of cigarette and cigar smoke hanging in the air of the Post Pub.
“There’s who?” Peter asked.
He was playing dumb. He knew exactly whom Tim was talking about. He’d spotted her across the D.C. bar the moment they’d stepped inside.
Tim scowled. “You know who. Your girl.”
Peter let out a laugh at that. “She’s hardly my girl.”
She was, in fact, the most interesting woman in the place. And that was saying something given this was the nation’s capital.
Her larger than life presence filled the room, tonight and last night. Yesterday in this very pub had been the first time he’d laid eyes on her.
“She would be your girl if you’d grow a pair and go talk to her instead of making eyes at her all night and then leaving. Alone. Again.”
Apparently, his friend Tim had noticed his gaze traveling to the woman when they’d been in here drinking the night before.
Peter scowled at the comment. “You mean instead of not behaving like you, who brings home a different girl every night. Correction. You don’t bring them to your home. You bring them back to my apartment.” Every damn time Tim was there visiting.
Tim lifted one broad, muscle-bound shoulder. “Can I help it that women find me irresistible?”
“Is it you they find irresistible? Or that you hint that you’re part of some highly trained elite team in the Navy? Hmm?”
Tim wobbled his head. “Let’s say it’s fifty-fifty.”
Peter scoffed.
Not that it mattered how many women Tim got, because Peter didn’t want anything to do with any of the females his less-than-discerning buddy from high school picked up. It was just annoying he did it during the rare times he could take official leave and visit Peter.
Although, Tim was right about one thing. Peter would like to at least have a conversation with the elusive beauty who talked only to her girlfriend and wouldn’t even make eye-contact with him.
“Okay. This is ridiculous.” Tim shook his head as he caught Peter staring over the heads of the other patrons in an attempt to get a better look at her. “Either you go talk to her, right now, or I will.”
At that Peter snapped his attention to his supposed friend.
“I’ll do it,” Tim warned. “You know I will.”
After being best friends with Tim since freshman year in high school back in Pennsylvania when they’d both made the JV football team, Peter believed he would.
“What would I say to her?” Peter asked, feeling like an idiot and nothing like the salutatorian of his graduating class at Penn State.
“How about you start with your name, doofus?”
Peter pushed his glasses up his nose, a nervous habit he’d been trying, without luck, to break. “Then what?”
He needed to prepare more than ten seconds of conversational material if he was going to actually do this.
Tim folded his thick arms across his chest, which only emphasized the pecs of steel visible through the cotton of his US NAVY short-sleeved collared shirt. “Then you ask her name. And what she does. Then you get to dazzle her with what you do for a living.”
“Dazzle her?” Peter sniffed.
“You think everyone in here gets to work for a United States senator?”
“And you think that’ll impress her?” Peter asked, not so sure. Politicians, and their staff, were a dime a dozen in this town.
Nope. He knew better. Women liked guys like Tim. Not guys like him.
Tim widened his eyes. “Duh. Yes, that’ll impress her. That shit—political power—is pussy bait.”
“Shh. Jeez. Watch your language.” Peter glanced around to see if anyone had heard his friend cursing like a sailor . . . even if he was one.
Tim rolled his eyes, then reached out for Peter’s tie. “And for God’s sake, take off that damn thing. You look like some kind of stick-up-his-ass professor.”
Peter took a step back, out of reach.
He slammed into the guy behind him, earning him an annoyed, “Hey! Watch it.”
“Sorry. So sorry.” Peter shot the sincere apology over his shoulder and put a defensive hand over the Windsor knot of his tie. “I look like a man worthy of working beneath the senator from Virginia. The tie stays.”
Tim lifted his brows and mumbled, “Now he grows a pair. Whatever. Just go talk to her.”
Big hands that used to catch every pass without fail back in high school when Tim was a wide receiver and Peter was the quarterback, grabbed Peter by both shoulders and spun him to face the woman of his dreams.
With a small vain hope that this encounter wouldn’t turn into a nightmare, Peter drew in a bracing breath. That only filled his lungs with acrid smoke from the man and woman huddled over an overflowing ashtray as they both puffed like chimneys next to him.
He took his first step forward, toward the girl of his future. Maybe. If he were lucky and didn’t screw it up.
As he neared the two girls, he reminded himself he could just as easily be heading toward his future humiliation.
When he was right up next to the object of his interest and her companion, he said, “Um, hi.”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at himself. He’d aced his public speaking class in college but you’d never know it now.
“Hi.” Her friend giggled and bumped her shoulder into the girl who had yet to speak.
“Can I, uh, buy you two a drink?” he asked, calculating quickly how much cash he had in his wallet before he’d made the offer.
Aides got paid next to nothing and rents around there were sky high. But he’d eat Ramen Cup O’ Noodles for a month if he had to, if it got him a date with this woman.
It wasn’t just that she was gorgeous, which she was with her long fall of silky blonde hair and porcelain skin that set off eyes so blue they looked almost unreal. It was that he could tell, just from the way she carried herself, that she was special.
This was a woman who would challenge him. She’d keep one lucky man fascinated for a lifetime. Not just for an hour, or maybe a night, like the girls Tim preferred.
Finally the sultry siren turned to fully face him. “And you are?” she asked.
How could he have forgotten to introduce himself? He was epically bad
at this. He should have brought Tim over with him for back up.
Of course, doing that could be risky. What if she liked Tim more than him?
No. Better to leave Tim in the background and just flounder through this on his own.
“Peter Greenwood.” He extended his hand and realized too late that was a dumb move.
What man stood in a bar and shook hands with the girl he actually wanted to kiss instead? Tim sure didn’t and he got the girl every damn time.
He dropped his hand quickly as her friend said, “I’m Maria and this is Martha, but you can call her Marty. Everybody does.”
Grateful for all the useful information Maria had supplied, Peter smiled. “Maria. Marty. It’s a pleasure to meet you both.”
“Slow Comfortable Screw,” Marty said, slowly enunciating each word while a challenge showed in her eyes.
Peter choked, coughing into his fist before he regained his composure. “Excuse me?”
“It’s what we’re drinking,” Maria clarified. “It’s vodka and orange juice, like in a Screwdriver, but with sloe gin and Southern Comfort. Slow Comfortable Screw. Get it?”
“Got it. I’d, uh, never heard of that one.” He’d also never had a woman say those particular words to him before. It only proved he was right. Marty was different.
She watched him as he turned to get the bartender’s attention. It took a few moments but finally the man came to his side of the bar.
“Two Slow Comfortable Screws and one Tequila Sunrise, please,” Peter ordered and tried not to feel ridiculous saying the crazy cocktail’s name.
When the drinks were delivered, he pushed a good portion of the hard-earned cash in his wallet across the bar. Then he turned to hand the drinks to the girls, before grabbing his own.
“Thanks,” Marty said, pinning him with her azure gaze as she drew in a long sensual swallow from the straw.
He recovered from watching her lips wrap around the straw and evaluated how things were going.
So far, so good, he determined. She was still there and talking to him. He’d just have to ignore the burgeoning hard-on in his trousers that the sight of her sucking on that straw had caused.
It wasn’t just her mind he was falling for. He was still a man, after all, and she had a killer body that no red-blooded male would be able to ignore.
“So, what do you ladies do?” he asked, trying to play it cool and like his heart wasn’t pounding so hard it was making his hands shake.
“We work for the Washington Post,” Maria answered his question instead of Marty. But that was all right.
Marty wasn’t doing much talking but her gaze had barely left him. That had to be a good sign.
“Right across the street.” He smiled. “That’s convenient.”
He joked about the location but in all honestly, he was impressed. The Post had won a Pulitzer for Woodward and Bernstein’s Watergate investigation. As he’d suspected, there was a serious brain behind the attractive façade. She wasn’t just a pretty face.
“And what do you do?” Finally, it was Marty who spoke. Although, he wished she wasn’t so stingy with her words. He could listen to her voice all night.
He stood a little taller as he answered, “I’m a legislative aide for Senator Scott.”
Marty’s eyes flew wide. Even Maria, the cheery one, lost her smile.
What had happened? Tim had said his job should impress women, not make them draw back like he was a viper.
“Do you know what Scott stands for? Do you hear the things he says?” Marty asked what were most likely rhetorical questions, but the thought of answering them had his heart thundering harder.
Things were becoming clearer. He should have predicted this reaction from her, given she worked for a liberal-leaning newspaper and he worked for a Republican senator.
Peter swallowed. “I, uh, just work for him. Doesn’t mean I agree—”
She took a step closer, which would have been a good thing normally. Not in this case. “I should hope you don’t agree. The man’s a racist and an anti-Semite. But if you truly do disagree with him, then the thing to do is quit working for him.”
He stood his ground, though now he had to look down to meet her gaze since he was over six feet tall and she was standing so close. Nearly touching him. He’d have enjoyed that, as well as the fire in her eyes, if she weren’t glaring at him.
Passion was good, but not when it was fueled by what appeared to be hatred.
What she obviously didn’t understand was that it was cutthroat getting a foot in the door in D.C. politics. There could be hundreds of applicants for a single staff opening. After graduating law school, he’d been grateful to get a paid position rather than have to volunteer and work for free like an intern.
Even if it was with a man who had a few black marks on his reputation, a legislative aide’s position with the Virginia senator was too valuable to throw away. It was a stepping-stone to becoming legislative director, and after that, one day, running for office himself. Though that day was still many years away.
“Um. It’s not really a black and white situation. There are many factors to be considered. Granted, I’m just an aide now. But I’ve always believed I could do more good working to make changes from inside the system rather than from the outside—”
“Talk, talk, talk. That’s what you politicians do. Talk.” She poked him in the chest with one manicured finger each time she said the word. “All your talk sounds really good until it sends two and a half million American boys to war and kills over a million Vietnamese.”
And now they’d moved on to the war, which she was, of course, against. So were many Americans, Peter included. “To be fair, I was still in high school when we entered the war—”
She ignored his defense. “Times are changing, Mr. Greenwood. Roe versus Wade gave women unprecedented rights over their own bodies. The world is changing, getting smaller thanks to the formation of the European Union, and this country’s new relationship with China and . . . and even the US and Soviet coordination in space. The good old boy network that is Washington politics will fall. Mark my words. The middle class, women, minorities, will all rise and take back power. Then there will be peace and equality for everyone all over the world. I hope all of you on the Hill enjoyed your war, Mr. Greenwood. Because it will be the last one.”
She planted her glass on the bar and spun, striding away from him.
Maria slurped up the remnants from her own glass before saying, “Thanks for the drinks.”
She scrambled after her friend while he stood, speechless as he watched the most fascinating woman he’d ever met strut away. The tantalizing view of her hips swaying within her short skirt with every stomp of her high heels made her disappearance through the door and from his life even more devastating.
Beer in hand, Tim moved to stand next to Peter. Side by side they stared at the door through which Marty had made her dramatic exit.
Tim turned to face Peter and cocked a brow high. “I’d ask how it went but . . .”
“Yeah.” It couldn’t have gone worse. And Peter wanted her more than ever.
“Sorry, man.” Tim slapped him on the back, making the mostly untouched drink in his hand slosh inside the glass.
“It’s all right.” Peter wasn’t giving up yet. He could resist anything except a challenge.
Martha—what was her last name? Dammit, he’d never gotten it. Anyway, Martha, aka Marty, was certainly going to be a challenge. But she was wrong about him and his beliefs. He just had to prove it to her.
Tonight had only made him more determined to do just that.
CHAPTER TWO
“So that Peter guy at the bar was cute.”
Marty lifted a brow at her coworker Maria’s ridiculous, although accurate, comment. “He works for Scott.”
It didn’t matter how good-looking Peter Greenwood was or was not. That he could work for such a hateful man like Senator William L. Scott was a complete turn off for her.
“Nice.” Marty snorted. That was an understatement.
Maria sighed. “That guy he was there with was pretty nice to look at too. Hopefully we’ll run into them both again soon.”
That elicited another snort of derision from Marty.
Life—or at least her love life—would be easier if she could be more like Maria. If she only cared about things on a surface level and not about what values were hidden beneath.
Even if Marty wasn’t looking for anything long term, how could she get past the fact that Peter—sexy though he was in a geeky sort of way—turned a blind eye to the words and actions of the most bigoted, and purportedly the most ignorant, senator on the Hill? She couldn’t.
Not even for just a night of hot sex with a man who was indisputably nice to look at.
She had a feeling Maria wouldn’t understand that so she decided to change the subject. “What are you doing in the office on a Saturday?”
Maria wrinkled her nose. “I forgot the files I was supposed to bring home to work on over the weekend. You?”
“I’m meeting Clark here.”
“Ooo. Who’s Clark?” Maria’s face visibly brightened.
Marty shook her head. “Relax. It’s not like that. He’s that freelance photographer who works with us sometimes. I’m sure you’ve seen him around. We’re going to walk over to cover the Greenpeace rally at the park.”
She’d figured if she was going to go for personal reasons anyway to show her support for the organization, she might as well cover it for the paper too. It was perfect. She’d write the article and submit it with Clark’s photos.
Folder in hand, Maria looked disappointed that Marty and Clark’s rendezvous was just for work and there wasn’t a romance afoot.
“Oh. Oh well. At least it’s a nice day for it. Have fun. See you Monday.” Maria wiggled her fingers in a goodbye wave.