“Yes, Sir,” they said in resounding unison.
He studied them. Bruised, battered, but not beaten. Never beaten. Pride swelled in his chest. All this time he had wished for his former SEAL teammates when he had a group of men who were just as good, just as loyal, and just as honorable at his command. Maybe even more so.
“All right.” Grabbing his cane, he gimped toward the plane’s door. “Then let’s give the EPC a giant FU and blow that puppy from the map, gentlemen.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
A MONTH LATER
WASHINGTON, D.C.
It should be raining. Hell, it should be storming with how wretched Gabe felt, but Mother Nature had blessed the Capital with a gorgeous start to summer. The nice weather served as a stark contrast to his mood and, honestly, kinda pissed him off.
Yet here he stood, barefoot and shirtless on his balcony, watching the sun drop below the city’s horizon, exactly as he had every other night for the past month. Reds, golds, and purples splashed across a sky so pale blue it was almost white—so hopeful, bright, and a little wild. Like one of Audrey’s paintings.
Like Audrey herself.
Gabe squeezed the balcony’s railing so hard his knuckles cracked. Called himself a thousand kinds of fool. He had to stop thinking about her. Had to stop standing out here every night, watching the sunset and pining for what could never be. Had to put her out of his mind and focus on what was important: the team and their training.
A knock sounded at his front door and Gabe forced himself to let go of the railing and go answer it. He made it halfway across the living room before a key rattled in the lock and Quinn stepped inside.
“Hey,” Quinn said and held up a grocery bag. “Brought some Natty Boh.”
Gabe shook his head and about-faced, going back to the window as Quinn headed toward the kitchen with the beer. For a second there as the doorknob turned, he had this stupid notion that Audrey had come to Washington and…
Yeah. Completely stupid. He’d known Quinn was coming over, so why was he so damn disappointed to see him?
“I don’t feel like drinking,” Gabe said.
At the kitchen counter, Quinn paused halfway through opening a second bottle. “You sick?”
“No, I’m not sick.”
“All right.” He popped the cap and tossed it and the bottle opener in the sink, then brought the two beers back to the living room. He held one out. “You look like you could use one. Have you slept since we left Colombia?”
“Of course I have.” Gabe snatched the bottle since Quinn was just stubborn enough to stand there, holding it out to him forever.
“Uh huh,” Quinn said and wandered around the room. “This place smells like a gym locker.”
“Haven’t done laundry.”
“Or dishes. Or shaved. Or showered.” He stopped beside the desk, littered with pizza boxes and empty bottles of beer and water.
Gabe thought he should be embarrassed by the state of his apartment, but couldn’t find the motivation for even that. Maybe he was sick after all. He never used to have a problem motivating himself. “I’ve been busy.”
“Doing what, internet stalking?” Quinn said and spun the computer monitor around.
Shit, he’d left Audrey’s website up on the screen.
“I’m checking up on a client.” He crossed to the desk in three strides and swatted Quinn’s hand away from the monitor. When he tried to close out of the site, he found he couldn’t do it. Again. Audrey’s face smiled out at him from the page and he just…couldn’t. He switched off the monitor instead. “That’s all.”
“You miss her,” Quinn said. “You should go see her, talk to her. Who knows? Maybe she’ll even forgive you for being an ass.”
“Wait.” A sneaking suspicion crept through the fog of depression hanging over Gabe’s mind and he narrowed his eyes on his best friend. “Is this an intervention?”
“No. But, c’mon, man.” Quinn encompassed the apartment with a sweep of his arm. “This isn’t you. What the hell?”
Gabe felt a muscle tick under his eye and loosened his clamped jaw. “Can we talk about something else? Like the reason you’re here.”
“Yeah, but you’re gonna listen to me first. I know it’s none of my business, but I have to say this. I’ve known you for twelve years, and in all that time, I’d never have dreamed of calling you a coward. Until now.”
Gabe ground his teeth as the blow hit exactly where Quinn had calculated it to: his pride. He was not a coward. “Noted. Now can we get to work? You wanted to talk to me about the team.”
Quinn took a long drink from his beer, then sat on the arm of the couch. “That mission in Colombia could have gone much worse.”
“No shit.”
“We were undertrained, underequipped. We put our team in danger.”
“Yes, I know.” Gabe couldn’t keep the heat out of his tone. He had put his team in danger, all because he had wanted back into the action. “And I’ve been working around the clock to rectify those problems.”
“When you’re not moping,” Quinn muttered, but then held up his hand. “Sorry. Low blow. I know you’ve been working your ass off here, but there is one problem you haven’t addressed yet.”
Gabe sat down in the chair across from him. “And what’s that?”
“We don’t have enough men.”
“I’ve been looking at dossiers.”
“We need a sniper.”
Hell, no. Gabe saw where this was going and frowned. “I know what you’re thinking, Q. Didn’t I already make that decision?”
“Yeah, but we need a sniper. A good one, at that. Seth Harlan’s one of the best and he wants on the team. He wants a second chance.”
Second chance.
In a flash of understanding, Gabe suddenly knew how the sniper must feel. In fact, hadn’t he felt the exact same way only a month and a half ago as he stood in his parents’ house in his dress whites, dreading his future? HORNET had given him and all of the other guys another shot. What was stopping him from doing the same for Seth Harlan?
What the hell. Not like his team wasn’t a ragtag bunch already. Why not add a potentially traumatized sniper to the mix?
And, speaking of second chances, maybe Quinn was right about other things, too.
Gabe picked up his beer, drained it on one breath, and stood. “All right, I’ll give Harlan a call, but he’s going to be your responsibility, Q.” With that, he strode toward his bedroom. He needed a shower, a shave, and to pack a bag.
“Where are you going?” Quinn called.
Gabe stopped just outside his bedroom door and glanced back at his messy apartment, curling his lip in disgust with himself. Why the hell had he let it get this bad? “I’m not a coward.”
Quinn raised his bottle in salute. “Hooyah.”
DOMINICAL, COSTA RICA
If someone had told Audrey this morning that she’d come home from a lunch meeting with her manager in San Jose to find Gabriel Bristow swimming in her slice of the Pacific, she would have called them crazy.
“Gabe?”
She walked out to the end of the dock, sure she was dreaming. She had to be. He’d starred in her dreams every night and they all began like this. She’d come home to find him begging forgiveness for being a class A asshole, then one of two things would happen. One, she’d yell at him, call him a bunch of creative four-letter words, and then kick him out with the righteousness of a woman scorned. Or two, she’d fall into his arms and make wild, passionate love to him for hours before they lived happily ever after.
It was still a toss-up which dream she liked better.
Maybe she fell asleep on the bus ride home? But she didn’t feel like she was sleeping. This was all too vivid, and as good of an imagination as she had, she didn’t think she could conjure up the feel of the salty ocean breeze playing with her skirt or the hot sun burning her cheeks. Plus, if she was dreaming, the air, soupy with summer humidity, would not be making her dress sti
ck to the sweat rolling down her spine and her hair would not be a frizzy mess right now.
So he really was here.
“Gabe?” she said again, so stunned she couldn’t find any other words for a solid five seconds. She shook her head. “What are you doing?”
Treading water, he looked up at her. His hair was slicked back, his long eyelashes spiked around wary golden eyes. “Well, uh, I’m swimming.”
“You came all the way to Costa Rica for that?”
Rata playfully bumped his side, and the smile that spread over his face was so genuine it melted the ice wall she’d tried to build around her heart to ward off his memory. He stroked the dolphin’s head, and then took hold of a rope and ball dog toy she’d never seen before and chucked it into the waves. With a happy chirp, Rata dove after it.
“Had to,” Gabe said. “There are no dolphins in D.C. You promised me a swim with dolphins, woman.”
She choked, caught somewhere between tears and laughter. And here she’d thought he was too out of it to hear anything she said during that long, horrible night. “You remember that?”
“Hmm. Vaguely.”
Her heart did a back flip that would have made her dolphins proud, but she couldn’t bring herself to relive that night and dredge up all the bad memories. Not yet. Not when seeing him again, alive and well and here, made her so freaking happy she struggled to hold back tears.
Instead, she took off her sandals, sat down on the end of the dock, and dangled her feet in the water. She watched her dolphins fling their new toy around with so much excitement she feared it might break.
“You brought them a toy.” And if she wasn’t already in love with him, she’d have fallen hard just then. “Thank you for that.”
Gabe swam toward her, strong arms slicing through the waves with ease. Goodness, he was even more graceful in the water than out of it, fast and lithe like her dolphins.
Reaching the dock, he folded his arms on the edge and kept his lower half submerged, but he was definitely sans swim trunks under the water.
“Well,” he said with a mock-serious expression, “this amazing woman I once knew told me—several times—that I needed to learn manners. Apparently, it’s rude to come calling without a gift.”
“Very true.” She smothered a laugh. “Gabriel Bristow, are you skinny dipping?”
“Like I said.” He grabbed hold of her legs and pulled her over until he was propped between her thighs. His hands slid under the skirt of her sundress, kneading her soft flesh. “It’s rude to show up without a gift. The dolphins got the toy. You get me.”
Oh, that did it. The tears she’d been fighting spilled over and she threaded her fingers through his wet hair. “I do, huh?”
“For as long as you’ll have me. I’m in love with you, too, Audrey. Have been practically since minute one.”
“Then why did you walk away?” And hurt me so badly. Although she didn’t say that part aloud, it was there, hanging in the air between them, palpable as if she had said it.
“Hell, I don’t know. Stupidity?”
“I won’t argue that.”
“And, uh…” He hesitated and cleared his throat. “And fear.”
Her SEAL, afraid? Somehow, she found that very difficult to believe. “Nothing scares you, sailor.”
“You do. Or what I feel for you does. It makes me raw. Exposed in ways that… God, I can’t even put it into words. I was terrified of keeping you. Terrified of losing you. I, uh, still am.” He lifted a hand to show her the slight tremor in it. “I’ve never been so goddamn frightened in all my life, but I couldn’t stay away. I’ve been miserable.”
Really, she shouldn’t be so petty that his confession made her giddy with a spiteful kind of glee. But she was and it did. He’d been just as miserable this past month as she had, which almost made all the tears she’d spilled over him worth it.
Almost.
But she’d need ice water in her veins to stay mad at him after a confession as sincere and heartfelt as that.
“I tried to find you,” she told him. “When Bryson got out of the hospital, I went to D.C., even attended one of Raffi’s plays in New York, hoping he’d tell me where you were. He wouldn’t, but he did say he’d have a talk with you.”
“Talk?” Gabe snorted. “That’s what he called it? Man, he reamed me a new one for walking away from you.”
“Hm. I like Raffi even more now than I did. And I liked him a whole lot before.”
“I knew you would. But it was actually Quinn who gave me the push I needed.”
Audrey didn’t bother hiding her disbelief. “Really?”
“He called me a coward and he was right.” He pulled himself up further to wrap his arms around her waist and laid his head in her lap. “I wanted to come right away, but I had to take care of some business things first. I wanted at least a solid week with you without interruptions.”
God, that sounded like heaven.
“How’s your brother doing?” Gabe asked.
She sighed. “He’s back to normal, throwing himself into work. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. He does make a conscious effort to be there more for his sons. And for me. He even came to my show. But…. I don’t know. After everything, I expected more of a change, I guess.”
“Change is a hard thing to do.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “it is.” And yet Gabe was willing to change his life by letting her into it. Oh God. She was not going to cry again.
Not. Going. To. Cry.
Instead, she forced herself to sound casual as she said, “Raffi mentioned word’s getting out about your team’s success.”
Gabe winced and nuzzled her leg. “I wouldn’t call it a success. We still don’t know who was pulling Jacinto’s strings. No way he came up with the abduction all on his own—he really was an idiot. But the EPC has publicly denied involvement and so have the other guerilla organizations.”
“But you got the bad guys and saved my brother and started making a good reputation for your team. I’d call that a success.”
“Yeah, guess so.” He didn’t sound convinced. “We’ve been flooded with contract offers. Mostly private security gigs, but I haven’t accepted any yet and won’t for a while. The guys are going through some serious training first. They’re all at SERE school right now, except for Quinn. He’s setting up our new office in D.C.”
“SERE school?” She lifted an eyebrow at the relish in his tone. “Do I even want to know?”
“Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape training,” he explained.
“Oh, that sounds…horrible.”
“It is. The guys’ll hate every second of it, but it will make them stronger as individuals and a team.”
She poked his side with her index finger. “So why aren’t you there with them?”
“Been there, done that, got the T-shirt, and sure as hell don’t wanna do it again.”
“Says the oh great and fearless leader.”
He made a noncommittal sound and nuzzled her thigh again, kissing her through the skirt of her dress. “Besides, I have other things to do.”
“Hm.” She couldn’t wait to hear this. “Like?”
“Like comb through the flood of resumes I’ve gotten for new guys, figure out an easy-to-remember name for the team—I’m not going with HORNET—and set up an international office.”
“Oh.” Didn’t that just deflate her bubble? She’d thought for sure he was thinking more along the lines of taking her to bed for the next, oh, fifty years. “Well. I like HORNET.”
He lifted his head to give her a dark scowl. “You would.”
She bopped his forehead with her palm, intending to shove him back into the water, but with his arms still wrapped around her, the jerk dragged her in with him. She broke the surface sputtering, cursing him in English and Spanish. He laughed, and the man who didn’t know how to cut loose yanked her under again.
Having not taken a decent breath before going under, she struggled to get to th
e surface, but he held her tight and his mouth covered hers. He gave her his air, then licked the inside of her mouth, igniting sparks of pleasure in her belly. Hooking her legs around his waist, she found him fully erect. All it took was a shift of her dress and a wiggle of her hips and—oh, yes, he filled her up until she gasped into his mouth.
Gabe walked toward shore, careful not to break the contact of their mouths or bodies, and each step pushed him deeper, deeper, deeper. They broke the surface together, gulping air before their mouths fused again with urgency. He dropped to his knees in the surf and the skirt of her dress floated out around them in a pale yellow cloud.
“God, sweetheart,” he groaned and rolled his hips in a torturous sweet and slow rhythm that matched the beat of the waves. “I’ve missed you. You feel…so…good.”
Audrey nuzzled his neck, opened her mouth over the strong beat of his pulse. His skin tasted like salt and sand and her man, and she adored the way he shivered when she kissed him there. Unlike the other times they’d made love, the build to climax happened slowly, and the release, when it came, stretched out into oblivion, soft and lovely, like floating on a cloud. Gabe tangled his fingers in her hair to tilt her head up and kiss her forehead, her nose. Before taking her lips, he pressed deep one last time and moaned with his own climax. Audrey held him through it and laughed. Her heart felt so full it was either that or cry again.
LOS ANGELES, CA
“Danny? Honey, what are you still doing up?”
Danny Giancarelli looked up from his laptop and managed a smile for his sleepy-eyed wife despite the headache pounding directly in the center of his forehead. She wore a ratty USMC T-shirt from his military days, which he’d given her before his deployment after 9/11. Leah said she’d worn it to bed every night for the entire year that he was gone and even now, all these years later, it was still her favorite nightshirt. His, too. She’d been wearing it the day he’d arrived home when he, knowing without a doubt at the ripe old age of twenty that she was the woman for him, popped the question. She’d worn it on their wedding night, and it was sexier than any of the lingerie her girlfriends had bought her for her bridal shower. She’d also worn it the night they’d made their first baby, and every subsequent baby thereafter.
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