Out of Uniform Box Set: Books 4-6 plus 2 Bonus Novellas

by Kennedy, Elle

  She quickly told Missy about the awful “date” with Porter, and when she finished, the older woman sounded utterly disgusted. “What a prick! Send my son to beat him up, pronto.”

  Laughing, Miranda set the phone in the cup holder and drove away from the studio. “I totally should. Seth would be happy to do it—he already kicked the ass of one man who had the audacity to bother me.”

  Seth’s mother was not perturbed in the slightest. “My boy’s always been a hothead. And too big and strong for his own good.” Missy sounded suspicious. “Is he giving you any trouble? Because he definitely has the tendency to bulldoze people in order to get his way. He gets his bossy, overbearing side from his father.”

  “Seth has a father?”

  The second she asked it, she felt like a total moron, and Missy made it worse by snorting. “No, Miranda, my son was born via immaculate conception.”

  Okay, she deserved that. “I mean, neither of you talk about Seth’s father. I didn’t realize he was ever in the picture.”

  “Oh, he was. Not for long, though. He bailed when Seth was five. But good riddance, because that man was nothing but trouble. Anyway, I wanted to make sure Seth isn’t being his usual jackass self and causing you any grief. Is he hitting on you left and right?”

  For a second she almost confessed that she and Seth were kind of dating, but she wasn’t sure if he wanted his mother to know about them. And depending on what happened tonight, dating might not even be in the cards.

  So she opted for a casual response. “No, he isn’t causing me grief. Why would he?”

  “Because he’s been panting over you for more than a year.”

  “What?” Astonishment shot through her.

  “Don’t you remember when he came to visit that time? He just got back from wherever the hell they sent him and he showed up at the theater?”

  With flowers for his mother. Right. She did remember.

  Seth had lusted over her from way back then?

  That baffling piece of information was still on her mind long after she’d hung up with Missy. She made a mental note to tease Seth about it when she saw him, but teasing was the last thing she wanted to do when she walked into her living room a half hour later.

  Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head. Seth was sprawled on the couch, his gaze focused on the Pixar movie playing on the TV, but it wasn’t his willingness to watch a bunch of animated toys dance around that stunned her.

  It was the two children tucked on either side of his chest, fast asleep.

  Her children.

  Seth was actually cuddling on the couch with her kids.

  His gaze sought hers, one finger coming up to his lips. She was surprised the twins had already conked out—it was only eight o’clock, and normally they didn’t go to bed for another hour or so.

  “Let me take them to their room,” she whispered.

  In the end, Seth was the one who carried them, and he even tucked Sophie in while Miranda tended to Jason. She was floored when she noticed him brush a lock of hair off her daughter’s forehead with infinite tenderness.

  What the heck had happened here tonight?

  She couldn’t wait for some answers, but the mom in her needed to get the basics out of the way first. “Did they eat their dinner?” she asked Seth in the hallway.

  “Every last bite.” He fished his smoke pack from his pocket. “Can we do this interrogation outside?”

  Nodding, she followed him out to the backyard. “Did they give you any trouble?”

  “None.” His movements were oddly ungainly as he lit a cigarette and sank into one of the chairs near the door. “Miranda…”

  It suddenly occurred to her that he hadn’t so much as touched her since she’d walked into the house. No kiss. No hug. Not even a hand squeeze. Wariness promptly rose inside her, making her stomach churn.

  “What’s going on?” And then just like that, she knew. He hated her kids. He didn’t want to make a real, solid go of this after all.

  Her heart dropped, but at the same time, annoyance and indignation rustled through her.

  “So that’s it, huh? You were with them for two hours and you’ve decided that you can’t—”

  “I yelled at Jason and made him cry.”

  Miranda’s jaw snapped shut. Then fell open. Her body went colder than a block of ice. “Excuse me?”

  The despair on Seth’s face did nothing to dim the anger that entered her bloodstream. “It was a moment of panic. Jason came home, and he was bugging me to play baseball with him and—”

  “And the idea was so terrifying you decided to yell at him?” she interrupted, her mouth tightening in outrage.

  “It was the uniform. I…” A ragged breath escaped. “It caught me off-guard.”

  Now she was just confused. “What, you’ve never seen a Little League uniform before, Seth?”

  He took a quick drag and then extinguished his cigarette in the small plastic bowl she’d placed on the table earlier for that exact purpose. Her confusion grew as she watched him reach into his pocket for his wallet. He opened the leather flaps, dug something out of one of the card slots and handed it over.

  Miranda stared at the square of newsprint. “What’s this?”

  “Just read it,” he said roughly.

  The paper was folded about fifteen times, so it took a few moments to unfold it and smooth it out. She’d figured it was a newspaper article, and she was right, except she wasn’t prepared for the headline that glared up at her. It was written in huge block letters, the lettering a faded gray when it had once been crisp black, but there was no mistaking what it said.

  MISSING BOY’S BODY FOUND IN DESERT.

  Her breath caught. The picture beneath the headline showed an adorable little boy in a white baseball uniform, a red cap on his head, and a big grin on his face. He was missing his two front teeth and giving a thumbs-up to the camera. The caption read: Adam Jonathan Masterson, age 7.

  “Is this…” She searched Seth’s veiled eyes.

  “My younger brother.”

  “Oh. Oh God, Seth.” Shock and horror spun inside her, along with a rush of sympathy. She stared at the date on the top of the page, and understanding suddenly dawned.

  She stumbled to her feet and went to him, sinking into his lap and slowly lifting up his shirt. She traced her fingers over the row of dates inked below his rib cage.

  “The day you became a SEAL,” she murmured, touching the third date on the list. Her fingers moved to the last date. “First time you saved a life.” She touched the first row of numbers, exactly one day before the date on the article. “The day they found your brother’s body.” Her fingers hovered over the second row and she looked up at him, questioning.

  “The day we buried him,” he said hoarsely.

  “Oh, Seth. I’m sorry.”

  He sighed. “Read the article.”

  She ended up reading it twice, her heart breaking the entire time. Seth had been eleven years old when his brother was abducted. A man in a pickup truck had snatched little Adam Masterson right out of his front yard, where he’d been tossing a baseball around. According to the article, Seth was supposed to watch his brother, but he’d turned away for a minute, giving Adam’s killer just enough time to grab the boy and haul him into his truck.

  Seth had seen it from the doorway and run after the pickup for two blocks before giving up the chase.

  “Oh my God.”

  She ran her finger over the third paragraph, which detailed the search for the abducted boy and the police detective’s suspicions that the abduction was connected to a string of child murders he’d been investigating for the past couple of months. Three boys had been abducted and killed, under similar circumstances. And those three bodies had also been found in the desert, all within a mile or two of Adam Masterson’s body.

  “Did they catch him?” Miranda asked, her voice cracking.

  Seth nodded. “Jarvis Henderson. He was apprehended trying to kidnap another boy
. Son of a bitch opted for suicide by cop. He refused to lay down his weapon during the standoff and the officers had no choice but to shoot. Back then I remember being happy he was dead. Now I feel cheated. Death was too good for that sick fuck.”

  Miranda placed the article on the table and rubbed her forehead. “I can’t believe Missy never told me about this. I had no idea you had a brother. That she’d had another child.”

  “She doesn’t talk about it.” Seth’s voice grew dull. “Ever. Not to me, not to anyone. She pretends Adam never existed.” Now he sounded angry. “And that part in the article about me turning away for a minute? It’s bullshit, Miranda. I left him in the yard. I left him alone in the yard.”

  Her breath hitched. “Seth—”

  “I was bored of playing catch so I went inside to watch TV, and I left Adam out there. I was supposed to be watching him, but I was a selfish little bastard and I couldn’t be bothered to play ball with my brother.” He hissed out a savage curse. “It’s my fault that psycho got him.”

  The guilt swimming in his eyes had her placing her hands on his broad shoulders to give them a firm shake. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I heard the truck door slam and when I went to the window, I saw him grabbing Adam.” Seth’s expression was flat, empty. “I ran outside just as the pickup was pulling away from the curb. I couldn’t catch up to it.”

  “You were eleven years old. Of course you couldn’t keep up with a truck,” she said gently.

  “Adam wouldn’t have been in the truck to begin with if it weren’t for me.” Bitterness dripped from each word. “So yeah, it was my fault. I knew it. The cops knew it. Mom knew it. It was a long time before she was able to look at me again. She couldn’t look me in the eye for about three years after he died. I think she didn’t want me to see the blame in her eyes.”

  Miranda cupped his cheeks and swept her thumbs over his stubble. “I don’t believe Missy blamed you for what happened. She worships you.”

  He shrugged. “We moved past it.”

  “By pretending your brother, her son, never existed.”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  She wanted to point out how unhealthy that was, but who was she to judge how other families dealt with their grief and heartache? Yet it ripped her apart that Missy Masterson hadn’t comforted her son, that she might’ve even led him to believe he was to blame for his brother’s abduction.

  “Do you understand now?” he said in a rough voice. “I don’t trust myself around children, and I know that’s ironic because I’m supposed to be this big, bad soldier who fights for the innocent and saves lives and all that. And I do save lives.” His rugged features hardened with determination. “I enlisted for the sole purpose of doing good. To make up for what I did that day.”

  “What you did that day…” she echoed, shaking her head in disbelief.

  He didn’t seem to hear her. “But I always made an effort to stay away from kids. Because what if I fucked up again? What if I turned away for even a second and then…then…” He swallowed. “I didn’t want to like your kids. I didn’t want to love them. Because the last kid I loved died. He fucking died, Miranda, and I’m the reason.”

  “You were eleven years old,” she burst out, unable to control the fierce wave of protectiveness that swept through her. She gripped his chin and forced him to look at her. “You were a kid yourself and you shouldn’t have been alone with Adam in the first place! Isn’t twelve years old the legal age to leave a child home alone in Nevada? I’m not assigning blame here—because sometimes fucked-up, horrible things happen and it’s nobody’s fault—but if anyone is to blame? It’s Missy. She should have known better than to leave two young boys to fend for themselves.”

  Seth looked slightly stunned. “She…was working. To support us. And…”

  “And nothing. Adam’s death is not on your head, Seth. It’s not on your mom’s head. It’s on Jarvis Henderson. He’s the monster who…” She couldn’t even finish.

  Next thing she knew, Seth’s strong arms came around her. Miranda couldn’t control the big gulping sobs that slipped out. She cried for Seth and Missy and Adam, for the pain and suffering each of them must have experienced, for all those years Seth had closed his heart off because he was terrified of losing someone else he loved.

  When her tears finally subsided, Seth was watching her with a sad expression.

  She sniffled and wiped her eyes. “What?”

  “Let’s just get it over with,” he said grimly.

  “Get what over with?”

  “The good-bye.”

  She nearly fell off his lap. “What are you talking about?”

  “I yelled at your son. I made him cry.”

  She couldn’t deny that the thought of someone reducing her son to tears unleashed her maternal claws, but she forced herself to retract the mom talons and look at the situation through a different lens. Her gaze shifted to the article on the table, focusing on the smiling boy in the baseball uniform. Then she imagined Jason bounding up to Seth in such a similar outfit, and she couldn’t help but empathize with Seth, couldn’t help but understand where his irrational response had stemmed from.

  “Did you apologize to Jason?” she asked.

  He nodded. “We worked everything out. All three of us.”

  Remembering the adorable scene she’d come home to, Miranda had to smile. “I noticed.”

  “The rugrats and I are good. I think…” He looked a touch amazed. “I think we might actually be friends now. But I understand if you don’t want me to be around them again.”

  She eyed him sternly. “Do you plan on yelling at either of my children again?”

  “Never,” he swore.

  “Will you ever make them cry?”

  “Never. Well, unless I’m ripping a Band-Aid off real fast or something, but you can’t hold tears like that against me.”

  Her heart squeezed. “I think the most important question I should ask is, now that you’ve spent some time with them, do you want them in your life?”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  “Then there’s no reason to say good-bye, now is there?”

  Hope flickered in his eyes. “You mean that?”

  “I mean it.” A smile tickled her lips. “So here’s another question for you—Seth Masterson, will you be my boyfriend?”

  19

  July

  The month of July flew by so fast Miranda wondered if maybe she’d blacked out for a portion of it. Somehow, it was now the night before the summer recital, and of course, disaster had to strike the second she patted herself on the back in the belief that everything would go smoothly tomorrow.

  “What do you mean you ripped your costume?” she demanded, unable to comprehend why her daughter sounded so calm. Normally Sophie would be freaking out. “How bad is it?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. Miranda had left the twins at the apartment with Seth while she’d driven back to the school to meet with the other instructors and finalize the details for tomorrow night’s big event. Now she was heading home, where a torn costume apparently awaited her.

  “It’s very bad,” Sophie said in a frank tone.

  “It’s not bad at all,” Seth’s muffled voice called.

  Miranda released an annoyed breath. “Wait—is it bad or not? Put Seth on the phone.”

  He came on the line a second later. “Don’t worry, babe, it’s just a minor tear and some sequins popped off. I’m handling it.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “You’re handling it?” The unmistakable whir of her sewing machine filled the extension. “Are you sewing Sophie’s costume?”

  “Duh. How the fu—how else do you expect me to patch it up? Using duct tape?”

  “You’re sewing,” she repeated, dumbfounded.

  “Miranda, I grew up in a Las Vegas dressing room. I know my way around sewing machines. And a needle and thread—I’ll definitely have to stitch those sequins back on by hand. I’m hanging
up the phone now. You’re distracting me.”

  A click sounded in her ear.

  Wow. Just wow.

  Then again, it probably shouldn’t surprise her that Seth had entered into this relationship with the same gung-ho attitude and intensity he committed to all his other endeavors. The man never ceased to amaze her, though. This past month, he’d completely debunked her conviction that bad boys made terrible boyfriends. He’d been attentive, sweet, quick to offer his assistance, and more than willing to hang out with the twins while she was at work.

  She wasn’t sure if he’d finally let go of the guilt and blame, or if maybe the simple act of sharing his grief with her had lightened some of the load, but since the night he’d told her about his brother, Seth had become a different person around her kids. He played catch with Jason, attended Sophie’s tea parties, took them out for ice cream. Sometimes he picked them up from school if he finished early at the base, other times he’d surprise them in the evening by showing up with dinner.

  No doubt about it, Miranda was enjoying this new lighthearted Seth. But that didn’t mean the old Seth had up and disappeared—her mocking, arrogant badass still simmered beneath the surface, usually making an appearance at night, when the twins were asleep and he could have his wicked way with her.

  Come to think of it, that sounded very appealing at the moment. Maybe after she dragged him away from the sewing machine they could find some time to be wicked to each other.

  When she got home, her daughter greeted her at the door, beaming like a Christmas tree. “Look, Mom, Sef fixed it!”

  Sophie did a little spin. The sequins on the top half of her leotard winked in the hall light, while the filmy blue skirt swirled around her knobby knees.

  “Let me see.” She stilled her daughter’s twirling body and squatted to search for the damaged part of the fabric. But for the life of her, she couldn’t find it.

  “That good, huh?”

  She lifted her head to see Seth smirking at her. His black hair had grown out over the past month, curling under his ears in a scruffy way, and he wore his trademark black T-shirt and cargo pants. With his feet bare and his jaw prickly with beard growth, he made a seriously sexy picture.