Night Maneuvers

by Tawny Weber

  Granted, they’d only talked for a few hours, but Aaron was willing to bet that he’d feel the same way after a few months, a few years. Hell, a few decades.

  Not that he had a few decades—or even a few minutes—to test the idea. He’d blown it, pure and simple. For himself and for the team.

  And with that thought, the litany started all over again. By the time Aaron had walked the mile back to base, he had a serious headache brewing, a strong craving for a shot of whiskey and a few hours of quiet to figure his way out of this mess.

  But as he walked through base, still alive and active at midnight, and into his barracks, he realized the whiskey and quiet were out of reach and that the headache wasn’t going anywhere.

  “I see you guys made yourselves at home,” he greeted, letting the front door slam as he stepped over Lansky’s body where the man had stretched across the floor. “Don’t you all have your own racks to bunk on?”

  “You had beer,” Prescott said from his usual spot on the couch, his booted feet propped on the coffee table and his sketch pad angled on his lap. “Not a vegetable to be found, though. Just potato chips. All that junk food is going to kill you someday, Bulldog.”

  “Gotta die of something,” Aaron muttered as he sidestepped Torres, who as usual was exercising, this time in the form of sit-ups. The man had a serious workout fetish.

  “But we won’t die today. Unless it’s from embarrassment,” Lansky said, his fingers flying over his keyboard in some game or another. “Speaking of, did you manage to maintain our blessed anonymity?”

  “I didn’t give her the Poseidon roster, if that’s what you’re asking.” Stalling for time, Aaron headed for the kitchen and more killer junk food. He’d decided on his march from the hotel to follow protocol, which meant reporting to Savino first. Granted, as mission leader—and the entire mission force—he could fill the team in at his discretion.

  Bottom line, he didn’t want to. Not until he’d figured out a workable contingency to rescue this operation.

  “Did you guys eat everything in here?” he asked from the kitchen, frowning as he yanked open one cabinet door after another.

  “Everything we could find.”

  “So when’s the article coming out?” Lansky prodded, his tone pure glee, as if he knew that Aaron had failed and thought it hilarious.

  “About the same time as your personality transplant. We’re hoping for human this time,” Aaron shot back. Frustration tight as a coiled spring, he continued his search for something—anything—to eat. “As for the mission, I’m not finished yet.”

  “You mean you couldn’t talk her out of it,” Prescott said without rancor.

  “Didn’t think you’d be able to pull the plug completely,” Torres said, spacing each word between pull-ups. “Not after Savino sussed out her connection.”

  “Connection?” Aaron asked from the depths of the kitchen cabinet. Hadn’t he hidden a bag of Doritos hidden behind the spare paper towels?

  “Yeah. Savino pitched the blackout on Poseidon to Admiral Cree and got shot down. Turns out our inclusion in this little project was made at the specific request of Admiral Granger. The new gal’s uncle.”

  “Admiral’s niece would not only have high connections, but a high bullshit threshold,” Lansky mused.

  Admiral’s niece? Aaron pulled his head, and his scowl, from the cabinet to stare at his teammates.

  “She’s what?”

  “Actually, you should ask she’s who,” Prescott corrected absently, not looking up from the sketch pad he was working on.

  Aaron stared from man to man, but didn’t detect any concern. Prescott was lost in his drawing. Lansky lay on the floor with his laptop angled high against his thighs, playing online poker. Torres, now doing one-handed push-ups, was the only one expending any energy.

  “Rembrandt’s right. It’d be who, not what. The who is Bryanna Radisson, niece of Admiral Granger, HQ Pearl Harbor, temporarily assigned to Coronado. I’d imagine they’re close, since she lived on Oahu until she went to U of H, Honolulu, for her degree in journalism.” Lansky slid Aaron a wicked look and raised one brow. “That’d make her a real professional, Bulldog. One with credentials to go with her family ties.”

  “What ties?”

  “Admiral Granger’s niece,” Torres grunted as he shifted to one-armed pull-ups. “Who, from the hickey on your neck, is just as hot as she is connected.”

  Shit. Damn. Sonofabitch.

  His head aching from the realization that he’d not only blown it, he’d blown it all to hell, Aaron resisted the urge to slap his hand on his neck and asked, “How does me having a hickey translate into her being hot?”

  “You don’t do any other kind. You might have charmed her, tried to persuade her, bribed or even threatened,” Prescott said, finally looking up long enough to point a finger at Aaron. “But sex? Brother, you only do that with the hotties.”

  Shit. He didn’t know which was worse. Failing to convince the woman to drop the article, or having his team know he’d slept with her in the attempt and still failed?

  “You should get a beer,” Lansky suggested.

  “I don’t want a beer.”

  “I meant for me.” The man closed his laptop and rolled onto his back, clasping his hands behind his head and giving Aaron a smile. “An alcoholic beverage would make a round of Adventures with a Bait Bunny go down nicely.”

  “She’s not a bait bunny,” Aaron snapped.

  But he’d treated her like one, hadn’t he? He’d used her interest in his status as a SEAL to lure her into bed with no intention of offering her anything back but a good ride and a couple of screaming orgasms to cement his rep as a hot stud deserving that revered status.

  God, he sucked.

  Then, like an RPG upside the head, it hit him.

  “Bryanna is Admiral Granger’s niece? As in, he’s the string she pulled to get this interview op?”

  “That’d be an affirmative.”

  Aaron had taken a hit to the chest once that’d knocked him back ten feet and, despite his protective gear, had left him bruised and breathless. He felt about the same way now.

  “I think I’ll take that beer,” he muttered, grabbing one from the fridge and, ignoring Lansky’s outstretched hand, dropping onto the couch next to Prescott.

  “I knew I was going in blind with no intel on the target, but I’d figured the angles. I thought a little judicious use of charm or guilt, whichever seemed like it’d have the strongest effect, would put an end to this article.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Torres said, dropping to the floor to sit, knees raised and arms resting there as he gave his complete attention. “And the results?”

  “I screwed up,” Aaron admitted, hating the churning in his gut but knowing no other way to deal with his teammates than full honesty. “I got carried away. I was blown away. She’s like nobody I’ve ever met. I thought I could handle her, overwhelm her. I was wrong.”

  “A lot of women have the power to knock a man back on his ass under the right circumstances,” Prescott said quietly, not looking up from his drawing.

  They all ignored Lansky’s interjection of “Naked circumstances.”

  “But the right woman? She’ll boggle a man’s brain while she sends his body straight to heaven and make him grateful for every second. The right woman makes everything matter. Makes everything brighter. Even the bad things.”

  Prescott was a man with intimate knowledge of the bad things. His pain filled the room, wrapping around them all like a blanket.

  Aaron shot a quick look at Lansky, then Torres. He saw the same sympathy in their eyes he knew showed in his own.

  They’d all been there when Prescott got married—the newly formed Team Poseidon had stood as witnesses, all eleven of them. They’d celebrated the birt
h of his son, mourned the loss of young life to circumstances beyond all control. As a team, they’d drank themselves into oblivion when Prescott’s wife called it quits.

  It’d been like watching a man get his heart ripped from his chest.

  Aaron grimaced, searching for something—anything—to say that’d offer support. But none of them—not even Lansky, a guy known for his serious lack of tact—said a word.

  Finally, Prescott glanced up from his drawing and looked from face to face.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to dredge up the past. Just wanted to point out that sometimes the choice seems wrong. But if the woman is right, there really wasn’t any choice to begin with.”

  “Like Bulldog would know if the woman was right after a few drinks and a roll between the sheets?” Lansky laughed. “It’s not that simple and it doesn’t happen that fast.”

  “It can be, and it does,” Aaron said softly. “Doesn’t make it easy, and it’s no excuse for not completing my mission, though.”

  “Yet,” Prescott corrected, tearing off his drawing and tossing it over so it fluttered onto Aaron’s lap. Grinning up from the page was Aaron’s own face, little hearts circling his head as he stood at a crossroad next to a signpost claiming one direction as Right, the other as Wrong. “You’ll figure it out.”

  “We’ll help. We’re Poseidon, brother,” Torres said, getting to his feet and offering Aaron a swat to the back that would have felled a smaller man. “Whatever we’re in, we’re in it together. Like always.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  STEPPING INTO THE pristine luxury of 1500 Ocean, the signature restaurant of the plush Hotel del Coronado, Bryanna gave her name to the hostess before looking around. It reminded her of a beach with its light, airy colors and an ocean view that looked close enough to touch just beyond the wall of windows.

  Quite a contrast to Olive Oyl’s. She was pretty sure she wouldn’t see any grizzled sailors in here, she thought as she followed the hostess through the dining room toward a garden table overlooking the water.

  “Hello, Uncle. Don’t you look handsome,” she greeted as the large, uniformed man pushed away from the table as they approached. He was all sailor, but there was definitely nothing grizzled about Uncle Martin.

  But it wasn’t the two hundred twenty pounds spread over a six-two frame that made him seem imposing. It was the air of power that radiated from him, power that conveyed this was a man who could handle anything. One who could overcome everything. Under it all was an edge of danger, sharp and cutting.

  Aaron had that same intensity, she realized as her smile trembled a little at the edges.

  “Little Bryanna,” he said, wrapping her in a hug. It was like being enveloped by a bear that smelled of Brut cologne. Warm, comfortable and just a tiny bit claustrophobic. “Glad to see you. How’re you settling in? Like California so far? How’s your mother? I spoke with her, and your father of course, in our monthly call last week. Tried to talk me into trying that MouthTime thing.”

  “FaceTime?” Bryanna deciphered as she settled into the chair he pulled out. “Mom and Dad are hooked on it.”

  They spent the salad course chatting about family, catching up on news and sharing stories of their recent visits. By the time the main course was served, prawns for Bryanna and duck for the admiral, he’d deemed the preliminaries satisfied and allowed the discussion to move on to Bryanna’s assignment.

  “So?” he prodded, knife in one hand, fork in the other and mouth half-full. “The article you’re writing. How’s it coming? Will you do the family proud? Did you bring your first draft?”

  Used to her uncle’s sometimes short, gruff sentences, Bryanna shifted her smile from family-friendly to congenial-business. In other words, she pulled on a layer of bullshit. She hoped it was thick enough to fool her uncle.

  “Why don’t I give it to you after dinner? You can take it back to your office, read it later. I’m sure it defies protocol to read at the table,” she said, trying a joking tone.

  “Nonsense.” Still eating with one hand, he held out the other.

  Bryanna had a brief urge to snag the last prawn from her plate and run as fast as her Jimmy Choos would carry her. But she’d never been a wimp and she didn’t see any point in learning that skill now. Not even to win love at first sight.

  So she pulled the pages she’d spent most of the night and all of the day on from her bag and, despite her reluctance to let go, handed them over.

  She kept her eyes on her plate as he read, marshaling her arguments as she pushed her rice into geometric shapes. She hadn’t changed her focus because Aaron objected to the centerpiece of her campaign. She wasn’t the type to sublimate her own needs, her own strengths or, heck, even her style choices in order to get someone else’s approval.

  Bryanna would never change herself for someone else. That wasn’t what she’d done at all. But when her uncle laid the pages on the table between them, she took a quick drink of water to cool the heat in her throat as he tapped an impatient beat over them.

  “Well...?”

  She didn’t have to ask what he was questioning.

  “I’ve been rethinking the scope of this project and this is a representation of that idea. I think it’d be stronger if we take a wider focus so as to incorporate the entirety of the base functions. I’ll do a sidebar on the SEALs, of course, but it might be better to take that as a general overview instead of sensationalizing their function.” Bryanna ended on an upbeat note, trying to infuse her words with as much finality as she could. After all, this was her job. She was the one putting together the campaign proposal. It was her vision driving the program and she could adjust it if she wanted to.

  It only took one look at her uncle’s face to see that she wasn’t bullshitting him nearly as well as she’d been bullshitting herself. But good ole Uncle Martin, proving he was as much politician as tactician, kept right on smiling.

  “Well, now, there’s a thought. Nice and simple, easy, even. Something an ensign with basic English skills could manage, of course, but nothing says a civilian needs to bring more to the table than our own personnel. One of the things I admire about you, Bryanna, is the high standard you set for yourself and how well you’ve lived up to it.”

  “There’s a lot to be said for dipping in toes before taking a deep-sea dive,” Bryanna pointed out. She carefully set her fork and knife down, using all of her energy to keep her smile from shaking clear off her face.

  “There is, indeed. And there’s a place in the world for people who settle for a dip. That place is not the Navy. Do you think we became a world power by taking the easy road? Do you think the Navy SEALs became one of the strongest forces in the known world by trying to please everyone?”

  Bryanna shook her head. “I think they’ve become the best because of their determination, their training and their dedication to their oath. That oath includes something about not seeking recognition or advertising their actions. One of the things they specialize in is covert operations. Covert means secret, stealth.”

  “Very true.” Looking unimpressed by her impassioned words, the admiral simply gestured with his fork for her to continue. “And Poseidon?”

  “Part of Poseidon’s power is their brotherhood. These men are possibly the most cohesive fighting force in the world. Every aspect of their lives is devoted to their team, their mission.”

  “Indeed. And the details of their overall team mission are known only to these twelve men. And, perhaps, to Admiral Cree, who leads them,” her uncle pointed out. “That adds to their air of exclusivity. But their prestige as an elite force does make some people nervous.”

  Bryanna narrowed her eyes, wondering if there was a message in the admiral’s words.

  “Their excellence is cause for envy,” she agreed. “Like every other element of their training, they go bigger. They cros
s-train so each man on the team holds multiple ratings. They push harder so each man excels in every aspect of their training. And every single man in Poseidon takes the very core values of the SEALs to heart as a way of life. Especially the value of silence.” She knew the awe she felt for that level of dedication rang with evangelical fervor in her voice, but she couldn’t help it. Didn’t want to, either.

  “Excellent summary,” her uncle said after a moment. “Isn’t that what you’re here to share? That standard of excellence?”

  He dabbed his mouth with the white linen napkin, then tossed it over his spotless plate.

  “Even if it’s at the expense of someone else? Do you think that publicity, that funding, takes priority over the anonymity of the teams? Isn’t one of the key components to the cohesive power of the team the very fact that they are unrecognized as individuals?”

  “All true. Every word of it’s fact, Bryanna. And if you can’t spin that information in such a way as to protect that anonymity and still promote our forces, your father paid too much for your fancy education. You’ve been hired to do a job, young lady. To build a campaign around the SEALs’ birthday, to create a celebration worthy of their name. One way or the other, you’ll do it,” he ordered as he got to his feet. “This issue will be settled tomorrow. My office, oh-nine-hundred. You’ll bring the campaign you intend to present to Public Affairs after you’ve defended it to Poseidon and earned their approval.”

  Oh, boy. Her hand pressed to her stomach, where the rich, buttery prawns did war with nervous butterflies, Bryanna took a deep breath. It looked as if she had one night to make some decisions, and to rewrite the article.

  “Will Aaron... I mean, Chief Ward be there?”

  “And his commander.” Uncle Martin arched one bushy white brow. “You afraid of a little skirmish?”