SEAL's Promise - Bad Boys of SEAL Team 3, Book 01
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SEAL’s Promise
Sharon Hamilton
Author’s Note
I always dedicate my SEAL Brotherhood books to the brave men and women who defend our shores and keep us safe. Without their sacrifice, and that of their families—because a warrior’s fight always includes his or her family—I wouldn’t have the freedom and opportunity to make a living writing these stories. They sometimes pay the ultimate price so we can debate, argue, go have coffee with friends, raise our children and see them have children of their own.
One of my favorite homages to warriors resides on many memorials, including one I saw honoring the fallen of WWII on an island in the Pacific:
“When you go home
Tell them of us, and say
For your tomorrow,
We gave our today.”
These are my stories created out of my own imagination. Anything that is inaccurately portrayed is either my mistake, or done intentionally to disguise something I might have overheard over a beer or in the corner of one of the hangouts along the Coronado Strand.
Wounded Warriors is the one charity I give to on a regular basis. I encourage you to get involved and tell them thank you:
https://support.woundedwarriorproject.org.
Copyright © 2014 by Sharon Hamilton
Kindle Edition
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. In many cases, liberties and intentional inaccuracies have been taken with rank, description of duties, locations and aspects of the SEAL community.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Author’s Note
Copyright Page
Author Bio
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
About the Author
The SEAL Brotherhood Series
Other Books by Sharon Hamilton
Author Bio
NYT and USA/Today and Amazon Top 100 Bestselling Author Sharon Hamilton’s SEAL Brotherhood series has earned her Amazon author rankings of #1 in Romantic Suspense, Military Romance and Contemporary Romance. Her characters follow a sometimes rocky road to redemption through passion and true love. Her Golden Vampires of Tuscany earned her a #1 Amazon author ranking in Gothic Romance.
A lifelong organic vegetable and flower gardener, Sharon lives with her husband in the Wine Country of Northern California, where most of her stories take place.
She loves hearing from her fans:
sharonhamilton2001@gmail.com
Her website is:
http://www.authorsharonhamilton.com/
Find out more about Sharon, her upcoming releases, appearances and news from her newsletter.
Newsletter ** Sharon’s Blog ** Sharon’s Website ** Facebook ** Twitter
Chapter One
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T.J. TALBOT LIKED weddings because he could always enjoy generous helpings of his two favorite things: alcohol and young lovelies.
Whenever a buddy got sweet on a girl and was contemplating ‘walking the plank’, as he liked to call it, T.J. was only too happy to help him celebrate. He never did mind the cost of the tux rental, the dinners and bachelor parties he had to spring for. It was all a means to an end. And his end was usually hooking up with someone and getting it on.
That was why he usually went to weddings stag. He’d sometimes promise to meet this or that lovely there, but usually he would go alone and play the field. Playing the field was much better for everyone involved.
He didn’t think of himself as a one-woman guy. He doubted anyone would be able to satisfy his appetites, especially his appetites in the bedroom. Experimentation was the norm for him. He didn’t want anyone crying to him after the fact, so he was careful. Yes, it did occasionally mean he went home alone. Far better to do that than to go home with a woman you had to console or peel off your skin the next day.
Tonight he had his eye on one of the bride’s best friends, Cindy. She had a funny little laugh, and he liked the way her tits jiggled whenever she did it. Her big blue eyes struck him right away as being interested in whatever he could dish out.
He always liked it when he could surprise a girl, help her learn new things about her sexual nature, and Cindy seemed like the perfect type, all spunky and full of sexual tension. He was going to pace himself, make sure he stayed in her line of sight a lot, and hope she’d chase him. He didn’t like it that way … unless he orchestrated it. Hell, he’d almost forgotten to line up with the other groomsmen he was thinking so hard about where he could take her for a bit of minor relief until he could have an all-nighter with her.
Four other SEALs were in the wedding party, and he had to admit they’d make a wedding portrait which would look good on the cover of any bridal magazine, except for their dark glasses. Only Frankie, the groom, posed without shades. Shannon had wanted them all without the shades, but T.J. smiled at her and put his back on in open defiance, and the others followed his lead.
She’d flounced off in a huff, a flurry of white cream puff material, and her perfume that made him sneeze. He knew about that hellcat streak she had. He angled his head to the side and intently studied her as she marched off to whatever mythical place brides hide when they go crazy. Even he had to admit that.
Frankie was white as a sheet as they gathered. “I wanna pray first,” he’d said to his best buddies. Tyler was there, of course, and Kyle. Ollie and Rory were as well. But T.J. was Frankie’s best friend, and that meant he had to be best man.
“Fuckin’ going to need a lot more than fuckin’ prayin’. Gonna need a miracle, Frankie. Shannon’s had the evil eye on me all morning…yesterday, too, and that means I don’t think you’re getting any tonight, not that you haven’t—”
“Fuck’s sake, T.J. It’s my fuckin’ wedding and has nothing to do with how my bride looks at you. Get that fuckin’ thought out of your head.”
“I was just sayin’—”
“Not what you’re sayin’ I have a problem with. It’s what you’re thinking.” Frankie was so nervous he was seeing conspiracies behind every plant, guest and bouquet.
“Just be glad we didn’t se
nd you to Alaska,” Tyler said, making it worse. Last year, one of the young recruits was honored with time off from BUD/S to get married—a request which was almost never granted. The boys thought it necessary to save him from his quickie wedding in Las Vegas, and so they got him stinking drunk and put him on a plane to Alaska so he missed his own wedding. They incurred extra wet and sandy for that one, and the toilets were cleaned so many times you could eat out of them.
This had worried Shannon, and worried her mother even more. Mrs. “I Want Moore” was one of the hottest women T.J. had ever seen, a toned marathon runner in her fifties. He had never before had fantasies about the mother of the bride. Mrs. Moore was twenty-five years his senior, but he knew she could clean his clock. He’d enjoy chasing her around a few places.
Turning to face Frankie again, he felt a tad sheepish about his lusty thoughts. He wiped his mind clean and decided to concentrate harder on Frankie’s day. His buddy was so crazy in love with Shannon, he needed extra protection to keep him from stepping out in front of traffic, or bumping into caterers, which he’d already managed to do several times today.
“Come on, Frankie. Lighten up.” T.J. slapped his cheeks to redden them up. “You need to stop looking like a dead man if you’re really gonna do this.”
“Yup. I’m doing this,” Frankie said to the auditorium full of people, the organ music now swelling up to the rafters. “I’m fuckin’ doing this.”
T.J. had a hunch he was looking for his courage and had come up short. He glanced down the hallway. Cindy was leaning against the wall right outside the bride’s dressing room, keeping guard, but also giving him the long vacant look he knew only too well. He unabashedly scanned her entire body and let her see he couldn’t wait to get her naked.
She abruptly turned, blushing.
Perfect.
Several minutes later, T.J. thought he might have to prop Frankie up he was so pale. “You okay?”
“Fuck you,” Frankie whispered a little too loudly. Mrs. Moore in the front pew frowned. Her eyes swept over the row of SEALs, but zeroed back in on T.J.’s face with an admonition he couldn’t mistake. Merely the little tilt of her chin down and the knotted brow told him he was on probation. Didn’t help he’d given Frankie more tequila than he usually drank in a whole month. Frankie was spacing out and losing track of where they were and what they had to do next. T.J. had never seen him so fuckin’ scared. Even in firefights overseas.
So he’d screwed up, been a bad influence on the groom. So what else is new? With a past of foster care home rejections and “repositioning” he was used to being on probation. It felt normal. Not until he got into BUD/S did he feel like he’d found home. A real home. Guys who finally shared his intensity for life and irreverence for batshit rules that everyone else thought applied to him. The SEAL’s ethos was the only set of rules he wanted to live by. And the beginning pretty much said it all:
In times of war or uncertainty there is a special breed of warrior ready to answer our Nation’s call. A common man with uncommon desire to succeed.
…I am that man.
He didn’t have to be a perfect man, and hell, there were very few on the Teams. He was good enough. He’d never be perfect anyway, and who would want to be? No, he was that guy who wouldn’t give up. That was all it was. Not ringing the bell. No matter what.
He thought about it while he watched Shannon’s white dress fill the aisle as she began her stately walk along the burgundy carpet to her willing but completely shitfaced groom. Her father was proud, as any father would be, to have such a radiant daughter, pink and soft in all the right places. She possessed the steady gait of a fearless warrior princess, and the purposeful way she advanced, like she was intent on a plan she was going to fully execute, was just like any SEAL. Her eyes nailed Frankie, who didn’t have a clue what he was getting himself into.
That made T.J. smile and check out his shoes. She was the kind of woman who would call the shots, run the household, run Frankie, manage the hell out of his schedule and get her future soccer players up on time and off to everything moms did with a house full of hellions. He saw lots of them in their future for some reason. Kids with snotty noses and hair a bit too long. Band-Aids and skinned knees. All the things he never had as a child.
But he’d watched those kids play through chain-link fences. Watched their parents cheer. Watched the juice breaks and the encouragement he never got from a single coach or foster mom. He was never noticed. Never special.
And that was just fine.
Chapter Two
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SHANNON FELT THE pressure of everyone’s eyes on her back. She tried not to think about her maid of honor, Cindy, who had pummeled her with questions about the mysterious, bad-boy best man she hated, T.J. Talbot.
That man had done his best to break them up, Shannon thought, and now was working hard to ruin her wedding. He’d exposed Frankie to the seedier side of life. Nothing they experimented with in the bedroom had ever been Frankie’s idea. It was always something T.J. had described to him.
Fuck T.J.
Yet, she knew that by marrying Frankie, tradition said she was, in fact, marrying all the SEALs on Team 3.
To hell with that!
Thank God she’d never have to sleep with any of the rest of them. Knowing they were so possessive about each other, made her a little bit jealous.
Frankie was listing to one side. T.J.’s strong arm propped him up, which was the biggest fuckbomb of all time.
Stop it, Shannon. She’d picked up their language, their mannerisms, as if they’d been wet paint and she was rolling through them naked. She not only thought in swear words, she was starting to say them. They rolled off her tongue as though she’d always talked and thought that way.
Yeah, and that was T.J.’s fault, too.
She could see the little Cheshire cat smile he was giving her, not that she would give him the satisfaction of knowing he was even a piece of cat litter stuck on the bottom of her shoe. Frankie was going to be all hers. She’d extricate him from his Brotherhood and give him back to them when she was good and ready. Screw the wives who told her she would always come second when it came to the Brotherhood. They didn’t know their men. She didn’t want a normal plain vanilla relationship with Frankie. He was fuckin’ addicted to her, and that was exactly the way she liked it.
There you go again. On your wedding day, and before you get to the altar and kiss your betrothed, you’ve sworn—what? Maybe three or four times? And had unclean thoughts?
Yeah, even ladies in white wedding dresses had dirty thoughts.
She knew that was normal.
Come on, Frankie. Stand up straight. She saw the glassy eyes and knew T.J. had caused it. Her Frankie was drunker than he had a right to be. From the unearthly glow in his blue eyes it was probably tequila, which he couldn’t hold well at all.
Not like she could. Oh yes, there was that song about dropping your clothes for margaritas. That was her. But Frankie was having a hard time standing up, let alone being conscious for the wedding. And it wasn’t because all the blood had rushed to his groin, either. That would have been funny. She’d have been happy about that one.
She shot a quick fuck-why-did-you-do-that? look at T.J. His smile broadened, and she saw him move his arm when she stood about a foot away from the man she’d chosen for the rest of her life.
The moment T.J. released his hold on Frankie, the groom fell, almost toppling her as well. Her veil was ripped from her hair, her bodice pulled down—maybe too far down for a second or two. And accompanied by the screams of everyone, especially the two mothers in the front pew of the church. Frankie did a face-plant onto what was luckily plush carpeting.
She adjusted the detachable beaded bodice to make sure she was decent first, and then had difficulty turning in Frankie’s direction, thanks to her long dress of chiffon and layers of voile. Feeling like her feet were stuck in mud, she turned slowly. T.J. was leaning down to get Frankie, and she caught a hi
nt of his aftershave, nearly brushing her lips across his cheekbone as he stood.
Three big SEALs helped Frankie up. His face bright red, sweat pouring down his forehead, and his shame preceded what Shannon knew would be a huge bender, perhaps one that would eclipse their wedding night. He’d messed up her wedding. He’d tried so hard not to. He’d told her every day he hoped everything came off the way she wanted. Perfect. Like she was perfect, he’d said. Did he suffer from premonitions?
Fuck perfect.
So…there was her fifth swear word and unclean thought. She had another one as she grabbed his arm and hoisted him to her side, which made a few people in the audience titter. T.J. was chuckling just loud enough for her to hear that too.
This is not happening. She knew she would wake up any minute. This must be the nightmare wedding from a bad movie. This wasn’t her wedding day. The day she’d dreamt about her whole life. The one where she’d be the star of the show.
After the vows were said and the rings exchanged, the two of them walked down the aisle, both relieved to have survived the ceremony without further bloodshed. Frankie led her straight to the bar, which she thought was a great idea.
He’d stopped to tell someone in the last row he wasn’t even drunk, which was such an obvious lie. It was a classless further slight to her not-so-perfect wedding. Like maybe God was responsible for all this.
It could be her fault, scaring the shit out of him and making him need to get so drunk he passed out. It would be a cold day in hell before she’d admit it publicly, though. She knew Frankie was scared to death to displease her. In her heart of hearts, she knew she was fully responsible. But no one would ever know.
No one. Ever.
What she loved about Frankie was his soft heart and how easy-going he was. That, and the fact that she would be the center of his universe, regardless of what her girlfriends warned her about the Brotherhood. He would be a kind and devoted husband and some day father. She could count on him to be there for her. She loved exciting and surprising him. He would support her in everything she wanted to do without question.