Troubleshooters 09 Hot Target

by Suzanne Brockmann

  “Man,” Robin said. “Sex with just one person, for the rest of your life? It sounds a little too limiting.”

  “Said the straight man to the gay man.” Jules came back to his bedside. “Your roots are showing.”

  “What is this? Bash the invalid day?”

  “Your hair’s much darker than I thought.” Jules reached out and touched Robin’s hair, parting it so he could get a better look. “So you’re really, what? Black Irish? Black hair, blue eyes?”

  Robin nodded. Dear God, that felt too good. “Robin O’Reilly Chadwick,” he said in his best Irish brogue, praying that Jules would stop. Or that he would never stop. He wasn’t quite sure which. “Top o’ the mornin’ ta ya, Jules Cassidy.”

  Jules smiled. “It’s afternoon.”

  “Not to a hard-drinkin’ Irishman, it’s not.”

  That did the trick. Jules stepped back. “I gotta go. My plane leaves in just a few hours.”

  Robin tried to memorize him, standing there with his tie slightly loosened, his sleeves rolled up. As he took his jacket from the back of the chair, Robin didn’t really check out his backside. He was just admiring the fact that the man was in such good shape.

  Liar.

  Jules slung his jacket over his shoulder, turned for one last look. . . .

  “Keep in touch,” Robin said.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”

  “So this is good-bye good-bye? Have a nice life?”

  “Yeah,” Jules said. “I think that’s best.”

  “I thought we were friends.”

  “We’re not,” Jules said. “I can’t be your friend because you’re not in a place right now where you can really be my friend, so . . .”

  “Why, because I don’t want to suck your—”

  “No.” Jules cut him off. “Because you do.”

  “Okay,” Robin singsonged, to hide how rattled he was. “If believing that floats your boat . . .” He could do only a half shrug without making his eyes roll back in his head from the pain.

  “I’m sorry,” Jules said. “I deserve better than that. I deserve someone who really wants me.” His voice shook. “God damn it—I deserve sunlight.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” Robin whispered.

  “Take care of yourself,” Jules said, and swiftly went out the door.

  “Wait!” Wasn’t Jules even going to kiss him? One last lingering breathless taste of what Robin claimed he didn’t want? One last sweet touch of lips, a gentle rasp of tongues to remind him of what he was too scared to let himself have?

  Pretty boy. Homo. Little faggot.

  Jules stuck his head back in the door, so obviously hoping to hear the words that Robin couldn’t say, wouldn’t say.

  “Steer clear of that mean Peggy Ryan,” Robin told him instead.

  Jules nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Thanks.”

  And then he was really gone.

  Robin shifted his weight, got slammed with the pain, and let tears rush to his eyes.

  “What are you doing?” Jane asked as she came out the conference room doors and into the backyard.

  Cosmo was standing at the edge of the property, staring at the back of the house. Still looking for that freaking bullet. He didn’t bother to tell her. She knew.

  “Your mom called,” she told him. “She’s running a little late, so if we can delay picking her up by about forty minutes . . .”

  “Sorry about that,” he said.

  “No,” she said, “I think she’s really considerate. Calling ahead so we don’t have to sit in her living room, waiting for her? Listening to the soundtrack from Jekyll and Hyde. Again.”

  He laughed. “All you have to do is ask her to play something else.” His mother quite possibly loved Jane more than she loved him.

  “I didn’t want to tell you this,” Jane said. “But I secretly love that musical. Your mom’s going to let me borrow it, along with Les Mis and Phantom—my other big faves—so I can put them onto my iPod and create a continuous loop—just keep it playing all the time.”

  Cosmo cracked up. Thank God she wasn’t serious.

  But then she hummed a few bars from the duet from the second act. God, he hoped she wasn’t serious.

  “So what’s the hardest part about being a SEAL?” she asked him.

  “Having to spend time away from you,” he told her. Not only was it true, but his answer got him a seriously intense kiss. What was it both Jane and Robin always said?

  Score.

  “I was kidding,” Jane told him, her arms up around his neck, her fingers in his hair, her body soft against him. “About the iPod.”

  “You’re hair looks great,” he told her. She was wearing it up, intricately piled on top of her head. “But is it really going to last?”

  “This is just a trial run. Wait’ll you see me tomorrow in my dress.” She wiggled her eyebrows. “Wait’ll you see me out of my dress. The crew bought me special-occasion underwear.”

  Words failed him so he kissed her again.

  Forty minutes. For. Tee. Minutes. Before he could suggest, oh, say, a preview of that underwear, Jane spoke.

  “This’ll be a really good house for kids, don’t you think?” she asked.

  Kids? Shit. Cosmo didn’t answer that one for a long time.

  They were driving to Las Vegas—with his mother, no less—to get married, because his leave was almost up, and Jane didn’t want to wait.

  He was surely going OUTCONUS with SEAL Team Sixteen. Probably to Afghanistan. Maybe Iraq. For God knew how long.

  He suspected they were one of a very small number of people who brought along the mother of the groom when they eloped. But Jane had insisted on that, too.

  Demanding woman. Now she wanted kids, too.

  “Are you ever going to speak again?” Jane asked him. “Or have I just silenced you for good?”

  “Yes,” Cosmo managed to tell her. “A very good house for kids.”

  “That’s what I thought, too. I mean, you know, in a few years, after we get it fixed up.” She was silent for, oh, maybe a tenth of a second before she asked, “What’s the second hardest part? Of being a SEAL? Not counting BUD/S training.”

  Over the past few weeks they’d talked, pretty much endlessly, about all the types of training he’d gone through, that he continued to go through, as part of the U.S. Navy’s Special Operations. He knew Jane needed to hear as much about it as he could tell her. Knowing he had the ability to take care of himself while he was off on a dangerous mission would help her sleep at night.

  So he’d damn near talked himself hoarse. He’d loved jump school. He’d loved the diving and underwater demolition, too, and he’d told her all about it. He loved the nonstop learning about what the Teams referred to as their toys—the high-tech equipment that they used while out in the “real world.” Survival training was always interesting to say the least, and PT was PT. Some of the guys suffered through; others merely endured it. Cosmo’s relationship with the endless physical training was slightly more friendly. He appreciated it. It kept him in top shape.

  He’d talked at length about that, too.

  Now he didn’t hesitate. “Report writing.”

  Jane laughed, which was his intention. There were sides to his job that he disliked far more than writing a report, but today was a special day, and he wanted to keep things light.

  “That’s right,” she said. “You mentioned something about that. You know, other people—normal people—are afraid of heights or close spaces or snakes. . . .”

  “It’s not a fear,” he said. “It’s more of a dread. It’s just . . . not something I particularly enjoy doing.”

  She got serious. “Aren’t you going to have to do a lot of it if you go to work for Tom Paoletti?”

  “When,” he reminded her. He wasn’t ready to leave SEAL Team Sixteen, not for a few years at least. But when he did retire—and being a SEAL was a very young man’s game, so that wasn’t too far in the future, old man t
hat he was at thirty-two—he had an open invitation to join Tommy’s Troubleshooters. Just a few days ago, they’d talked a bit about Cosmo opening a Los Angeles office. “It’s no different from what I have to do as a chief in the Navy.”

  “I can help you, you know,” Jane told him.

  “No,” Cosmo said. “Thank you. Very much. I know what I’m supposed to do. List the facts, give my version of what happened. I just . . . I don’t know, always have trouble getting started.”

  “I was thinking more along the lines of helping by providing incentive to finish quickly, so you can come home to me.” She kissed him again.

  Yeah, he could definitely see that there would be some serious motivation to get his reports handed in quickly in his future.

  They’d decided to keep his apartment in San Diego, and Jane, whose schedule was more flexible, would bounce between there and Hollywood. And, she had pointed out, during those months when she was making a movie, they could always meet halfway, at Cosmo’s mother’s place in Laguna Beach.

  That was not his ideal location for a romantic rendezvous, but he loved the fact that his fiancée honestly liked his mother.

  Fiancée for only a few more hours. By this time tomorrow, she was going to be his wife.

  She smiled up at him. “So. Forty minutes—well, thirty-something now. We could either look for imaginary bullets, or . . . I don’t suppose you want to see my new underwear?”

  Jane laughed as Cosmo threw her over his shoulder and carried her inside.

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  DEDICATION

  To my fabulous son, Jason:

  Even as a tiny child, your smile could outshine the sun, and your cheerful disposition and kind nature made you countless friends. Everyone who met you loved you!

  At three, walking became too mundane for you. Instead, wherever you went, you danced. And occasionally you swished! One of the first times you did that, your dad looked at me. “Where did he learn that?” I shrugged. We didn’t let you watch TV. “Got me. It’s just . . . Jason being Jason,” I said, and went off to play with you and your vast collection of cars and action figures.

  At eight, you discovered musical theater. You wanted to sing and dance onstage, so you auditioned for a semipro production. You were just a little too young, but you charmed the director and became the tiniest pickpocket in an eight-week run of Oliver!

  Your dad loved Stevie Wonder, and I, a former rock-and-roller, was in my country music phase. “What’s with all the show tunes?” your grandmother asked me when you played the soundtrack to Secret Garden over and over again. I smiled. “It’s just Jason being Jason.”

  At nine, you had a class project—write a letter to someone you admire. “Why Bette Midler?” I asked when you told me your choice. “She’s my favorite actor in the world,” you proclaimed after watching Ruthless People thirty times in a row. She wrote back, and you framed her signed picture, putting it in a place of honor on your dresser.

  “Wow, that’s interesting,” I said to your dad, after we once again agreed that Jason was truly unique. “I wonder if he likes Cher, too?”

  (You did! Along with Bernadette Peters and Debbie Reynolds and . . .)

  At ten, you went to see a show that featured an actor friend you’d made while appearing as Winthrop Paroo in The Music Man. On the ride home, you asked me, “Did you know Charley Dude is gay?” “Yeah,” I said. “Wasn’t his performance excellent tonight?” You agreed, but were unusually quiet for the rest of the drive.

  A few days later, we had friends over to watch a movie, and as Eric and Bill sat together on the couch, they started their usual banter. “Raising the homo-shield!” Bill announced, invoking the invisible force field that would supposedly allow him to sit so close to Eric without anyone making gay comments.

  It was all supposed to be funny, but how, I wondered, would those jokes sound to someone who was gay?

  That night, after everyone went home and you were in bed, your dad and I discussed it, and we agreed. We gathered all of our friends together and announced that from this moment on, there would be no more gay jokes in our house. No more inadvertent gay bashing.

  Because if you were gay—and I was pretty sure even then that this was, indeed, the way God made you—you were not going to grow up thinking there was anything wrong with you.

  Years later, when you were fifteen, you still wanted me to tuck you in at night. So I’d stand by your bunk bed and we’d talk a bit about the day. I’d also gather up your dirty clothes. You were supposed to put them in a laundry basket, but sometimes your aim was off.

  One night, you took a deep breath and said to me, “Mom, I think I’m gay.”

  “I know that,” I told you, giving you a hug and a kiss. “I love you. I’ll always love you. Where did you put your dirty socks?”

  A day or two later we sat down and talked about safe sex and personal safety. I have to confess that it made my heart ache to have to tell you that there were people out there, people who didn’t even know you but who hated you anyway—people who might try to hurt you because you were gay. Because you were simply being you. And it was your turn to give me a hug and say, “I know that. But, Mom, the world is changing.”

  Today, as I write this, you are eighteen. You are a grown man, and I am so proud of you.

  Yes, the world is changing, but it’s not happening quickly enough for me. I was outraged when we went to the Gay Pride parade last June and you saw that hateful, ignorant sign that read, “God hates you.”

  I wish the person carrying that sign had seen you at three, at eight, at nine, at ten. If he had, then he would know that you are a true child of God. If he had, then he would know that by being gay, you are just being Jason.

  God loves you, I love you, Dad loves you. Unconditionally. You know that.

  And I know that you love and accept yourself. You are confident and strong. Just like when you were three years old, you allow Jason to be Jason.

  Shine on, my son!

  This story is for you.

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  for details!)

  A shout out to my early draft readers: Lee Brockmann (Hi, Mom!), Deede Bergeron, Patricia McMahon, and Scott Lutz. Thank you so much for your input!

  Thanks, also, to the team at Ballantine: Linda Marrow, Gilly Hailparn, Arielle Zibrak . . . As for my editor, Shauna Summers . . . Thank you, THANK YOU, thank you, thank you!!!

  A ton of appreciation goes to Those Who Help Keep Me Sane: Eric Ruben, Christina Trevaskis (aka Tina Fabulous!), and my terrific agent, Steve Axelrod! Thanks also to fellow writers, Pat White and Alesia Holliday.

  A special note to Donovan and Betsy Trevaskis: Thank you for sharing your wonderful daughter with me. I know how hard it must be for you, with her so far away. I promise she will visit you often!

  Thank you to my own precious daughter and son, Melanie and Jason. I love you guys!

  Thank you to Michael Holland for providing musical inspiration. As I wrote Hot Target, I listened repeatedly to “Everything in the Whole Wide World,” “(It Came As) No Surprise,” and “Firefly IX” from Michael’s latest CD, Beach Toys Won’t Save You. (Michael’s CDs are available at .)

  A huge HOO-YAH to Capt. Josh Roots of the United States Marines for being my contact in Iraq, and for distributing dozens of care packages to the young men and women in his unit. Thank you, too, to the readers who contributed to those packages during my Flashpoint tour—especially those who helped us out by bringing the boxes to their local post offices!

  Thank you to my relentlessly patient husband and best friend, Ed Gaffney. (Ed’s first book, a legal thriller called Premeditated Murder will be published in June! I’m so proud!)

  Last but not least, thank you to PFLAG—Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays—an organization dedicated to changing attitudes and creating an environment of understanding
so that gay family members and friends can live with dignity and respect. For more information, go to .

  As always, any mistakes I’ve made or liberties I’ve taken are completely my own.

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