by Paige Tyler
Felicia’s stomach clenched. “You don’t think he’ll come back, do you?”
The mere thought of him coming after her and Stef—or Logan—made her feel like she might pass out.
Olson shook his head. “It’s not likely. Sure, he’ll be pissed about his brother, but he’s also smart enough to know he was lucky to get away as it is. He’s not dumb enough to try to slip back into the US, not purely based on a need for revenge.”
Felicia hoped he was right.
Olson glanced at the conference room. “We’re almost done with your sister. You should be able to go home in a little while.”
His idea of a little while turned out to be another hour, but at least Logan hung around with Felicia while they waited. Now she and Stef were safe, she could fully appreciate how gorgeous he was. Not to mention what a nice guy he was. She didn’t know if it was because they’d gone through a life-and-death experience together, but standing there in the hallway talking about inconsequential everyday things, she felt like she’d known him for years.
“You want a ride back to the grocery store where you left your car?” Logan asked after the CIA finally finished up with Stef. When Felicia gave him a questioning look, he added, “One of my buddies drove my SUV over here from the warehouse.”
She hadn’t even thought about his SUV—or hers—until now. “In that case, yes. If it’s not too much trouble.”
It hadn’t sounded nearly as ridiculous when she said it in her head. Like she hadn’t caused him enough already by taking his hostage.
But Logan smiled. “No trouble at all.”
They didn’t say much on the way back to the shopping center. Probably because they were all tired. Heck, Stef looked like she might nod off in the backseat. Felicia couldn’t blame her. It had been one hell of a day. She was just glad her sister was okay.
Felicia turned around to face front again when she caught sight of the grocery bags on the floorboard.
“Crap,” she said, looking at Logan. “You have ice cream back there.”
“Damn. I completely forgot about it.” He cringed. “It’s probably a big gooey mess. The hot dogs probably didn’t fare so well either.”
She blinked. “You eat hot dogs?”
Even wearing a uniform, she could tell how built he was. The urge to reach out and squeeze his biceps to see if she was right was so strong, she practically had to sit on her hands to keep from giving in.
Luckily, Logan didn’t seem to notice. Instead, he gave her an injured look. “What’s wrong with hot dogs?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” she said. “I assumed you’d be more of a lean protein guy.”
He let out a chuckle. “Lean protein means cooking, and cooking’s above my pay grade. Unless it’s in a microwave. I can handle that.”
She laughed. She still couldn’t understand how he could have a body like his on a diet of hot dogs and Hot Pockets. The image gave her an idea though.
“I figured out how to repay you for what you did for Stef and me,” she said. “I’m going to make you dinner.”
In reality, it didn’t even begin to cover what she owed him. She wasn’t sure if anything ever could. But a home-cooked meal was the least she could do.
“You don’t have to do that,” he insisted. “I don’t expect anything in return for today.”
He was humble, all right. It was a quality that made him even more attractive.
“I know,” she said. “But I want to.”
Logan flashed her a smile as he turned into the parking lot of the shopping center. “Okay, sounds good.”
Felicia relaxed in her seat, relieved—and more than a little thrilled—he’d accepted her invitation. She would have asked him to follow her back to her place right then, but that meant bailing on her sister, and she wanted to spend some time with Stef to make sure she was okay after what happened today.
“Next Friday work for you?” she asked Logan.
“Definitely.” He glanced at her, his mouth curving into a sexy grin and making her pulse skip a beat. “I can’t wait.”
She smiled. “Me, either.”
Chapter Four
IS THE OLD man still pissed at you?”
Logan didn’t answer Nash’s question. Mostly because carrying on a conversation while wearing a gas mask was hard as hell. Then again, crawling on your belly through the mud beneath a barbed wire-covered obstacle while wearing the heavy rubber contraption was damn difficult, too. But that was the whole point. To make the Monster Mash even more challenging.
The Monster Mash was a combination of physical and skills training. This particular session had started at 0500 that morning, and Logan and his Team were still going strong three hours later.
The event had started off with a two-mile swim in the ocean followed by a six-mile run along the sandy beach. After that, they’d done a series of training events, which included everything from doing first aid on “patients” who’d been shot or hit with fragments from an IED to putting together a satellite communication kit so they could call in a medevac helicopter for the wounded, then doing maintenance on some broken AK-47 assault rifles until fully functional so they could subsequently secure the landing zone for the bird. As usual, getting from one event to the next required a lot of running while carrying a load of gear at the same time.
The second to last stage was the gas mask obstacle course. Once done, it would be another run along the beach, where they’d get picked up by a boat and hauled back to base.
The Monster Mash made for an exhausting morning, but there was no better way to train. If you could do basic tasks like first aid, equipment operation, and weapon maintenance while you were dog tired, there was a good chance you’d be able to do it in combat.
Logan ripped off his gas mask the second he came out from underneath the barbed wire and shoved it in the pouch on his hip.
“Yeah, Commander Hunt is still steamed,” Logan said as he fell into a run alongside Nash. “The old man raked me over the coals the last two days.”
When Logan hadn’t been with the CIA, NSA, and Naval Intelligence. He’d spent Monday and Tuesday at the headquarters building, and this was his first day back with his Team’s platoon.
“What’d you tell him?” Dalton asked from the other side of Logan as they ran. “I mean, beyond the obvious fact you were befuddled by a beautiful woman pulling a gun on you?”
Logan chuckled. “I was smart enough to not bring that up. I chose to go with a more common I thought I did the right thing.”
“Did he buy it?”
“Not really.” Logan snorted. “I swear the guy hasn’t done a damn thing that wasn’t by the book.”
On the other side of Nash, Chasen laughed. “I don’t know. I remember Kurt telling me some stories about Hunt. According to him, the guy used to be a hell raiser back when he was a lieutenant.”
Logan found that hard to believe, even if the platoon’s senior enlisted member Chief Kurt Travers had been the one telling those stories. Logan was sure if he checked, he’d find a stick up Mack Hunt’s ass.
“What did the feds want to talk about?” Nash asked. “I would have thought they’d have all their answers from the hours they spent questioning you and those two women on Saturday.”
“I thought so, too,” Logan agreed. “But they kept going over what happened. They asked a lot of questions about our mission over in Syria, too.”
Chasen looked at him sharply. “What did you tell them?”
“Nothing at first since I didn’t know if I could,” Logan admitted. “But Hunt told me to spill the beans about everything.”
The guys did a collective double take. SEALs rarely talked about what they did on their missions, even with the CIA and NSA.
“You can’t tell me the Russians forcing a woman to bring a recording device onto base isn’t related to the pilot we were there to rescue,” Chasen said.
“Yeah, no kidding,” Logan said. “No one would say it in so many words, but from the w
hispers I heard, the CIA and US Special Operations Command were meeting in the NSWC building on Saturday to discuss how badly everyone wants to get their hands on the pilot.”
“Shit,” Dalton muttered. “The guy must have a buttload of information if the Russians were ballsy enough to send people to spy on the meeting.”
“Maybe not,” Nash argued. “If it were so important, why would they grab up two women who didn’t have base access to do the job?”
“I’m pretty sure they were the backup plan,” Logan said. “The Navy guy we found dead at the warehouse was the Coronado NAB security manager. One of the guys from the CIA said they found a hundred thousand dollars in an overseas account with the guy’s name on it. They assume he placed the monitoring device in the main conference room and was supposed to use the recording device outside the building. Either he got a conscience at the last minute or got greedy. Regardless, if the guy had done what the Russians had paid him for, they’d have had their information, and we never would have known. Until we went back to Syria for the pilot again and got our asses handed to us.”
And his gut told him they would be going back there.
“What about those three guys we caught?” Chasen asked. “Are they saying anything?”
Logan shook his head. “Not a damn thing. Those guys know there’s nothing we can do to make them talk.”
Like there was a lot he and his fellow SEALs didn’t know about the Russian pilot.
“Speaking of beautiful women with guns,” Dalton said. “Is the one who took you hostage going to get into trouble?”
“No. That’s never even been a consideration,” Logan told him. “I made sure the cops and the feds recognized Felicia and Stef were the victims here. Felicia only did what she had to, and I was never in any danger.”
Dalton gave him a sidelong glance. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were a little protective of her.”
Logan opened his mouth to say no, but then he thought about it and decided yeah, he did feel protective of Felicia and her sister.
“Maybe,” he admitted. “But it’s only because I have a date with Felicia on Friday night.”
“You asked a woman out for a date after she and her sister were held hostage by a group of terrorists?” Chasen let out a snort. “Man, that’s seriously messed up.”
“It was her idea,” Logan said. “She asked me to come over to her place for dinner as a way of thanking me for helping her out.”
“Uh-huh,” Nash said.
Logan shook his head with a laugh. “Guys, it’s just dinner.”
“And is she aware you’re allergic to relationships?” Dalton asked.
“Look who’s talking,” Logan countered. “Okay, first off, I’m not allergic to relationships. I simply haven’t found a woman I feel serious enough about to bother getting deeply involved. And second, I never said anything about this being a relationship. One more time for the cheap seats—it’s just dinner.”
They ragged on him for the next two miles, reminding him about how many dinners he’d been to the last few years. He couldn’t argue too much because they were right. He’d dated more than his share of women, and none of them had ever progressed beyond casual sex. He simply wasn’t looking for more.
“You know, sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you’re looking for a relationship or not,” Chasen said as they slowed to move through the deeper sand lining this part of the route they’d taken. “If you meet the right person, it kind of happens. I wasn’t looking for anything serious either, but then everything changed when I met Hayley.”
Logan had to admit he had been as surprised as the rest of the guys when Chasen fell for his girlfriend, journalist Hayley Garner. But Felicia had merely invited him over to say thanks for saving her sister. That was it.
As he jogged down the beautiful white sand beach though, a part of him hoped it might turn into something more.
Chapter Five
IF IT’S JUST dinner, you don’t mind if I join you guys, right?”
Felicia paused from dumping tortilla chips into a bowl to give her sister a look. Stef had stopped by to help her get ready for her date with Logan, and after approving of the dress Felicia had picked out and declaring the Mexican food she’d made for dinner perfect, her sister had perched on a stool at the island.
Stef swiped a chip and nibbled on it. “So, it isn’t just dinner.”
“I told you,” Felicia said. “This is my way of saying thank you for saving both our lives.”
“So you don’t think he’s cute.” When she didn’t answer, her sister grinned. “I knew it! You asked him out because you think he’s hot.”
Felicia sighed. Denying it would be stupid, so she didn’t bother. She’d been telling Stef all week this was simply her way of paying Logan back for what he’d done. She’d been careful to avoid using the word date because every time she went out with a guy, Stef started cueing up the wedding march.
Her sister, the romantic.
But Felicia wasn’t interested in running headlong into marriage. Maybe that was a funny way for a wedding planner to act, but she’d seen enough of both the good and bad of the institution of marriage to know it was better to take things slowly when it came to deciding who you were going to spend the rest of your life with. If you didn’t, that bit about till death do us part quickly turned into till the lawyers take all our money.
That said, she was definitely attracted to Logan and wouldn’t mind seeing him on a regular basis. She simply wasn’t ready to pick out wedding invitations yet.
Felicia took the homemade salsa out of the fridge when the doorbell rang. She glanced at the clock on the microwave. Seven o’clock. Right on time. She liked punctuality in a guy.
Stef and Chewbacca, Felicia’s lab-mix, trailed behind her to the entryway like two curious puppies. While Chewy patiently hung back to see who their visitor was, Felicia’s sister dashed past her to peek through the peephole. Felicia nudged her aside.
“Hey!” her sister protested. “I want to see what he looks like out of uniform.”
Felicia couldn’t help laughing. “You are such a spaz.”
She had to admit, she was curious, too.
Running her hand down the front of her dress, she opened the door. When she’d called him earlier in the week to confirm their date, she’d told him to dress casually, and Logan had taken her at her word. She had no idea cargo shorts, a T-shirt, and beach shoes could look so spectacular on a man, but the shorts showed off his tanned, muscular legs, and the T-shirt was snug enough to see the outline of all the muscles he had hidden underneath.
“Hey,” she said, giving him a smile.
“I’m not too underdressed, am I?” he asked as he took in her sleeveless dress. “We did say we’d keep in casual, right?”
She laughed and motioned him inside. “We did. You’re perfectly dressed for dinner.”
He looked her up and down again as he entered, his eyes lingering on her legs before traveling back up her body. Felicia swore she could feel the heat she saw there warming up her bare skin.
“You look beautiful,” he said.
She blushed, momentarily at a loss for words. She pushed her long, dark hair over her shoulder to cover how flustered she suddenly was. “Thanks.”
Felicia didn’t know how long she and Logan stood there in the entryway gazing at each other, but it must have been longer than she thought because her sister cleared her throat.
“You remember my sister Stefanie,” she said.
Logan smiled. “Yeah, of course. How’re you doing?”
“It’ll be a while before I stop keeping Mace at the ready when I’m walking through a parking lot, but other than that, I’m doing good,” Stef said. “Thanks again for what you did.”
She grabbed her purse from the couch then gave Chewy a pat on the head, her dark ponytail flipping over her shoulder as she turned back around. “I’m going to leave you two lovebirds alone. Have fun!”
When was o
ut the door before Felicia could even give her the stink-eye or tell her to be careful. “Text me to let me know you got to the dorm, okay?” she called as the door closed behind Stef.
Sighing, Felicia turned to Logan. “Ignore my sister.”
Logan chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. I’m glad to see she’s doing okay after what happened.”
Felicia smiled. “Yeah, me, too.”
She’d been worried about Stef the first few days after the kidnapping, afraid her sister might have post-traumatic stress, but by Sunday she was the same bubbly twenty-year-old she’d always been. Which was astounding to Felicia. Then again, how exactly did someone behave after they’d been kidnapped and held hostage? It wasn’t like there was a handbook.
Logan crouched down to give Chewy a pet. “Who’s this guy?”
Felicia smiled. “This is Chewbacca, but I call him Chewy for short.”
Logan flashed her a grin. “Big Star Wars fan, huh?”
“Huge,” she admitted then added, “I know. I’m a nerd.”
He chuckled as he got to his feet. “Then it makes me one, too. I’ve got the original movies on Blu-Ray.”
“I don’t feel so bad then,” she said. “Can I get you a beer?”
Logan nodded. “Thanks.”
He followed her over to the island separating the kitchen from the living room. “How the heck did you get a condo this close to the beach, and in Pacific Beach no less? This area is always in demand.”
She glanced at him over her shoulder as she reached into the fridge to grab a beer for him and a wine cooler for her. “My parents owned it, and I kept it after they passed away. It’s the only way I could ever afford to live here.”
Regret crossed his face. “I had no idea your mom and dad were gone. I’m sorry.”
She set the bottle of beer on the counter in front of him. “Thanks.”
“How old were you and your sister when they passed away?”
“I was twenty-two and Stef was sixteen.”
He shook his head. “Damn. That must have been tough.”
“It was.” She gave him a small smile. “But now I don’t have anything except happy memories of them.”
