by Jan Irving
A Total-E-Bound Publication
www.total-e-bound.com The SEAL in my Attic
ISBN #978-1-78184-002-3
©Copyright Jan Irving 2012
Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright May 2012
Edited by Laura Hulley
Total-E-Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Total-E-Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Total-E-Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2012 by Total-E-Bound Publishing, Think Tank, Ruston Way, Lincoln, LN6 7FL, United Kingdom.
Warning:
This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Total-e-burning and a sexometer of 2.
This story contains 92 pages, additionally there is also a free excerpt at the end of the book containing 7 pages.
Lightning Strikes
THE SEAL IN MY ATTIC
Jan Irving
Book three in the Lightning Strikes series
On the run with his sexy SEAL Caleb Black, Doctor Murphy Walton is looking for answers while trying to avoid getting his heart stomped a second time. Doctor Murphy Walton is having a really bad day. His favourite patient died in surgery and now he’s on forced leave. He comes home and discovers sizzling cowboy Caleb Black skulking in his attic. He’s never forgotten the SEAL or the passionate week they shared, though he hasn’t heard from Caleb in more than a year.
But now things are different. Caleb doesn’t remember who he is or why he came to Murph. All Caleb knows is he has to retrieve something from Murph’s attic…and keep him breathing when assassins try to eliminate the one person he could never forget—shy, sweet Murph.
Dedication
To my friend Heather Eschuk, siren-voiced yogini who teaches the Nidra and has a mean way with an hourglass. What if everything you are right now is as it should be? We only have the now, we are only the grains of sand in the middle of the hourglass, falling.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Charlie Brown: Charles M. Schulz
Starbucks: Starbucks Corporation
The Only Thing That Looks Good On Me Is You: Bryan Adams Jameson: Pernod Ricard
Nero Wolfe: Rex Stout
Star Wars: George Lucas, 20th Century Fox
YouTube: Google Inc.
The X Files: 20th Century Fox Television, Chris Carter Jeep: Chrylser Group LLC
Hummer: General Motors
Chapter One
“It wasn’t your fault, Murph. You have to stop thinking you can save everyone,” Lilah Blake told me over my phone.
I sat slumped in my rusted sedan, rubbing my eyes. As of now, I was on a forced sabbatical, which could be permanent. I’d fucked up the first week of my residency in surgery and, unless I could convince the all-mighty Dr Royce I wouldn’t fall apart the next time I lost a patient on the table, I was out.
So much for heading back to the small town where I’d come from and running a needed medical clinic. So much for all the years of grinding work. So much for the brass shingle I hoped to hang—Dr Murphy Walton, Surgeon.
“It was my fault.” Even as I heard myself say it, I knew it wasn’t. Not unless I was God. And I wasn’t. But damn, tonight I wanted to be.
“It’s not like you froze on the table. You did everything you could for Jeremy.” Lilah’s voice was like relentless rain. If she only knew she wasn’t doing me any good. Whatever she said, it just hurt.
“Anyone but me, Lilah. It shouldn’t have been me.” I’d been too close to the fourteenyear-old who had passed away from complications. I’d known him for three years. He’d been courageous, funny, smart as hell. And he’d wanted to be a doctor, never mind his heart had been half the size it needed to be.
“Life sucks. Medicine more so.”
“Yeah.” My voice cracked. My mother had been a nurse and she’d warned me not to go into medicine. Too grim, she’d said.
“When was the last time you slept?”
“No idea.”
“Get some rest. You’ve got a week off and I’d make the most of it. Then you can talk to Royce and get your ass reinstated in the programme.”
My body creaked as I got out of the car, still wearing the greens I’d worn in surgery. I could smell myself, perspiration and fear and tears. The tears at least I’d shed in the privacy of my locked car.
It had been the shittiest day ever…save one.
As I staggered up my sagging front steps, I knew I should take time to shower and have breakfast. I couldn’t remember when I’d eaten anything and I knew my body was in serious crash mode. If I let myself fall on my bed, I wouldn’t wake up for hours and I needed food and water or I’d be hung over.
But when I walked into my kitchen, I stiffened. My favourite Charlie Brown Christmas mug was on the table, but I hadn’t had time to make coffee the previous day. I’d gone through a Starbucks drive-in on the way to the hospital instead. The pasta I’d made two nights ago was on a plate. What hadn’t been consumed was drying into unappetising curls while scattered bandages and a crumpled washcloth took up the rest of the space on my kitchen island.
“The hell…?” Okay, I was a slob, no question, but I didn’t remember making this mess. A warning tingle ran down the base of my spine, waking me out of my depressed fog.
I was not alone in my house.
I picked up the washcloth and saw it was stained with crimson clouds. Blood. There were more dark stains on the floor, as if my intruder had bled on it.
Fabulous.
I should call the cops. I knew that. I even knew a few of them since cops and medical personnel met up frequently in the battleground of the ER.
A loud thump from my attic above had me grabbing my phone. “Fuck this shit.”
And that’s when I spotted it, a wallet lying on the floor. Wow, crooks really did need to take night courses in B&Es because I didn’t think leaving your wallet at the scene of the crime was genius.
I flipped it open and stared at the driver’s licence.
“Un-fucking-believeable.”
My bad day had just got worse.
I found him curled in the foetal position. He was lying in the deepest shadows of my attic, his clothing dirty, torn and bloody. He was shivering compulsively.
Despite that, his cornflower blue eyes were as beautiful as ever.
“Caleb.”
He just stared through me, like he didn’t know who I was, like he didn’t care.
“Some things never change,” I muttered.
His forehead was crusted with blood. The healer in me took over and I reached to examine him.
One moment my hand was outstretched, the next I was flipped on my back, his forearm digging into my neck. “Fuccckk!” I gasped. “Caleb, get…get off me!”
Those pretty eyes were blank, animal-like. He was running on reflex and that was scary, given what he was. I let my hands fall to my sides.
I didn’t fight him. If I fought him, somehow I knew he’d kill me.
I wasn’t getting enough oxygen. I heard my harsh breathing whistling in and out. God, I needed to breathe!
He let me go abruptly, falling back on his butt, rocking.
“Caleb…” My voice was raspy. “What. The. Fuck.”
He buried his face against his raised knees.
Pain, he was in some kind of pain.
I sat up, rubbing my throat. Emotion swallowed me. I wanted to hit him. He deserved it for what he’d put me through. I was glad he was a mess, the fucker—
I reached out slowly. “Caleb.”
His body tensed.
“Caleb, you know I’m a doctor. Let me look at you. You’re hurting…”
“I don’t…” His voice was strange, muffled. Didn’t sound like him. Caleb Black was confident and used clipped military-speak—when he spoke at all.
“Caleb, come on.” I waited until he looked at me. I was taking no chances. Had the stress from his job somehow broken him? I knew he was out of the country for months, living under God knows what kind of conditions… “You must have wanted a house call, or why are you here?” I tried a smile.
“You want to hit me,” he croaked.
I laughed. “Yeah.”
He frowned, looking lost. “Why?”
Jesus, was he really that clueless? “Let me count the ways…” I growled, feeling the tide of anger rise.
It didn’t help that, despite the dirt, despite the blood and edgy look in his eyes, he was as gorgeous as ever. He wasn’t muscle-bound, but sleek, built for speed, built for deadly intentions, the perfect killing machine. His brown hair was longer than I remembered, hanging to just above his shoulders, giving him a wild look. His olive skin was pale and he was unshaven, his jaw shaded with bruises. He was wearing a black wifebeater that showed off the firm, rounded shape of his shoulders. His jeans were torn, spattered with mud.
And he stank.
“What happened to you?”
He only shook his head.
“I need to examine you. Caleb, no, don’t—Damn it!” I reached out and gripped his upper arms, my heart thudding. You didn’t take liberties with Caleb. He was like a tiger that allowed a caress on his terms, but if he decided he was done playing with you, he’d maul the hell out of you.
And I was all too aware I meant nothing to Caleb.
“Hurts.”
I froze. Caleb saying ‘ouch!’ was totally out of character. The guy could eat bullets and ask for more with a laugh, or so he’d always come across. All part of the image. He didn’t say ‘hurts’. He didn’t look lost. Hell, for all I knew, he didn’t bleed. Except…he did.
“Let. Me. See.”
I took his chin in my hand and looked into his eyes, checking out his pupils as best I could in the shadowy attic. Next, I ran my hands gently over his face. He flinched when I brushed fingers over a knot on the back of his skull. Mother fucker, that was one big lump. “Okay, I know that hurt,” I said. “I need you back in the kitchen.”
He resisted, and Caleb resisting meant we went nowhere.
“I need better light.”
“It’s exposed,” he whispered. “A security risk.”
Another chill went down my back. “I can’t help you if I can’t get a proper look. You should be in a hospital!”
“No hospital.”
He went rigid under my hands.
“Caleb…”
“No hospital. First place…first place they’d look.” His head bent. He was panting, shuddering in my arms, ice cold.
“Okay. Okay, look at me.”
He looked but then his gaze jerked around the room.
“Caleb, no hospital.” Unless I decided he needed one, then I’d renegotiate. “Come on, let’s get you downstairs.”
He leaned on me, bent over like an old man. He was limping.
I put an arm around him, protectiveness rising. No one was going to hurt him. I didn’t know what was happening, but no one was going to hurt him.
In the kitchen, he dragged one of the chairs against the wall before sitting in it. “You’re late today,” he said.
I blinked. “Like you know my schedule,” I said sarcastically.
“Yeah, I do.” He said it like it was a fact.
I shook my head. “I don’t understand you. You show up after a year, you’re all beat to hell—” He winced as I pulled the cotton of his wifebeater off some scrapes encrusted with blood. “Just what did you do to yourself? You look like you’ve been running in the woods.”
“Woods, yes. Couldn’t risk a vehicle. Not here. Not coming here.”
He wasn’t making any sense. I examined his pupils again. “That lump on your head was bad. I’d really like to get you checked out properly.”
“No.”
“Caleb, your colour isn’t good, you sound confused—”
“I’m…operational.”
“Barely.”
Except for a few scrapes, his chest, arms and back were fine. He took off his jeans, revealing he still went commando. “You pulled a muscle in your knee?” His knee had some previous scarring from what looked like a bullet wound.
He ran a bemused hand over the white lines above the kneecap. “I don’t know.” He looked at me sharply. “I don’t know!”
“All right. It’s okay, Caleb.” But it wasn’t okay. How could he not remember how he’d hurt himself? Unless that knock on the head was a factor. “I really think you need some tests.”
“No tests.” He jerked me close, his eyes running over my face. “You help me. You said you were a doctor.”
I frowned. “You know I’m a doctor but I can’t—”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Excuse me?”
“Help me in twenty minutes. Starting now. Go.”
“Jesus, Caleb, this isn’t some kind of game.”
But he sat back and I knew he wasn’t bluffing. Caleb never bluffed.
I went back to the sink, filled a bowl with hot water and soap and used it on his scrapes. I washed the blood from his forehead and the back of his head. I wasn’t gentle when I probed the injury.
“I’ll get you some clean clothing.” I still had some of my brother’s clothes, a towering kid who played college football. He was about Caleb’s size.
When I returned with the clothing, Caleb was looking out of my front window. His body was lined up with the drape so he wouldn’t be visible from the outside.
“Just what are you expecting, a SWAT team?” I tossed the clothes at him, fed up. He caught them and unselfconsciously began to cover up that glorious body. Damn him. He didn’t even look at me.
“Don’t know…” he whispered.
“Don’t know what?” I was so over him…
“Don’t know what’s happening.”
“Caleb, you really need to go to a hospital.”
He smoothed the blue cotton down his chest, then looked at me. “Thank you.”
That was another thing Caleb Black never did. Say thank you. “You’re creeping me out.”
His brow furrowed. “By saying ‘thank you’?”
“What are you doing here, Caleb? It’s for more than free medical help. You’re capable of taking care of a few scrapes.”
He picked up the bowl and threw its murky pink contents into the sink, running the tap. “Do you have a mop?”
“Huh?”
“A mop. You need to wipe up the blood on the floor.”
“I can house clean later. Right now I want answers.”
He strode into my living room with the rags and his filthy clothing.
“Caleb!” I ran after him, watching as he started a fire, building kindling, adding wood, striking a match. When it caught, he tossed the rags and clothing into the fireplace.
“I’ll wipe down the kitchen,” he said. “The attic.”
My mouth was dry. I licked my lips. “You’re scaring me.”
He ignored my comment, using his T-shirt
to wipe the table, chair, light switch. Then, while I waited in the kitchen, I listened to him go up the stairs. Wiping things down. Why would he need to do that?
When he returned I had the mop and bucket out. He put his dishes in the dishwasher and even though it was only half full, he ran it. I mopped up the blood and dirt.
“Someone’s after you. Someone hurt you.”
He looked in the hall mirror, examining himself. “I have to cut my hair. I’ll do it somewhere else.” He looked at me, face hard. “We have to go.”
I shoved the mop and emptied bucket into my cleaning closet. “What the fuck is going on?”
He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know.”
“Bullshit!”
He shoved me against the wall, breathing hard. “I don’t know!”
His elbow was against my throat. I held my hands up. “All right. What do you know?”
He dropped the arm, thank Christ. “I…woke up.”
“Where? When?”
“In…the woods. The woods near your house. This morning. I woke up and I was cold.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I came… There’s something here.” His face changed. “I left something here. Months ago.”
“You haven’t been here in more than a year,” I spat.
He shook his head. “No, I’ve been here. I left it here.”
“What?”
He ran his gaze over me. “Change. Do it now. You can’t be here when I leave; it’s not safe for you here.”
I laughed. “This is my home. I’m not—”
He pulled out a gun. Shit, I hadn’t seen it, even when I’d stripped him. How had he managed to conceal it? He pointed it at the floor but I got the message in his expressionless face. “You know I’ll use it.”
“Yes,” I rasped.
He followed me to my bedroom, watched me as I sat on the bed where we’d once tangled, sweaty and desperate, my hair in his fist, his body thrusting into mine… There was no trace in his cold eyes that he remembered what we’d done here. I changed my clothes and he grabbed my upper arm, herding me from the room. The gun had disappeared again but he didn’t need it to intimidate me.
