How incredibly sweet. “I am.”
“You want to wait inside?” he asked.
“I think there’s some other event scheduled for the field for later this afternoon,” Britt told him. “They don’t have time for a rain delay—they’ll have to reschedule the game, or call it or whatever they do in baseball. So, no. It’s over. We don’t have to wait.”
“You hungry?” Wes asked. “We could have an early dinner.”
“I’d like that,” Britt said, and amazingly it was true. On her way over, she’d made a list of about twenty-five different plausible-sounding reasons why they should skip dinner, but now she mentally deleted them. “Do you mind if we go down to the locker room first? I want to give my car keys to Andy.”
“Aha,” Wes said. “I pass the you’ll-get-into-my-car-with-me test. Good for me.”
She led the way toward the building. “Even better, you passed the okay-I-will-go-out-to-dinner-with-you test.”
He actually held the door for her. “Was that in jeopardy?”
“Blind dates and I are mortal enemies from way back,” Britt told him. “You should consider the fact that I even agreed to meet you to be a huge testament to sisterly love.”
“You passed my test, too,” Wes said. “I only go to dinner with women who absolutely do not want to have sex with me. Oh, wait. Damn. Maybe that’s been my problem all these years….”
She laughed, letting herself enjoy the twinkle in his eyes as he opened yet another door—the one to the stairwell—for her. “Sweetie, I knew I passed your test when you asked me to adopt you.”
“And yet you turned me down,” he countered. “What does that tell me?”
“That I’m too young to be your mother.” Brittany led the way down the stairs, enjoying herself immensely. Who knew she’d like Wes Skelly this much? After Melody had called, setting up this date, she and Andy had jokingly referred to him as the load. He was her burden to bear for her sister’s birthday. “You can be the kid brother I always wanted, though.”
“Yeah, I don’t know about that.”
The hallway outside the locker rooms wasn’t filled to capacity as it usually was after a game, with girlfriends and dorm-mates of the players crowded together. Today, only a very few bedraggled diehards were there. Brittany looked, but Andy’s girlfriend, Danielle, wasn’t among them. Which was just as well, since Andy had told her Dani hadn’t been feeling well today. If she were coming down with something, standing in the rain would only make her worse.
“My track record with sisters isn’t that good,” Wes continued. “I tend to piss them off, after which they run off and marry my best friend.”
“I heard about that.” Britt stopped outside the home team’s locker room door. It was slightly ajar. “Mel told me that Bobby Taylor just married your sister…Colleen, wasn’t it?”
Wes leaned against the wall. “She tell you about the shouting that went down first?”
She glanced at him.
He swore softly. “Of course she did. I’m surprised the Associated Press didn’t pick up the story.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as she—”
“No,” he said. “It was. I was a jerk. I can’t believe you agreed to meet me.”
“Whatever you did, it wasn’t a capital offense. My sister apparently forgives you.”
Wes snorted. “Yeah, Melody, right. She’s really harsh and unforgiving. She forgave me before Colleen did.”
“It must be nice to know you have such good friends.”
He nodded. “Yeah, you know, it really is.”
He met her gaze, and there it was again. That darkness or sadness or whatever it was, lurking back there in his eyes. And Brittany knew. The outwardly upbeat Irishman would be fun to hang around with and was even adorable in his own loudly funny way. But it was this hidden part of him, this edge, that would, if she let it, make him irresistible.
He was, without a doubt, her type. But she wasn’t his, thank you, God.
Eddie Sunamura, the third baseman, popped his head out of the locker room. His wife—June—was one of the soaking wet diehards. She lit up when she saw him, and he grinned back at her. They were only two years older than Andy, a thought that never failed to give Britt a jolt.
“Give me ten more minutes, Mrs. S.,” he called to June, and Brittany couldn’t keep from groaning.
“Eddie, you’re unbelievably hokey,” she said.
“Hey, Britt.”
“Have you seen Andy?” she asked him.
He pointed down the hall before he vanished back into the locker room.
And there was Andy. At the end of the hallway. In the middle of what looked to be a very intense discussion with the team’s star pitcher, Dustin Melero.
Andy was tall, but Dustin had an inch on him.
“Man, he grew,” Wes said as he looked at Andy. “I met him about four years ago, and he was only…” He held his hand up to about his shoulder.
It was then, as they were gazing down the hallway at the two young men, that Andy dropped his mitt and shoved Dustin with a resounding crash against the wall of lockers.
Brittany had already taken three steps toward them, when Wes caught her arm. “Don’t,” he said. “Let me. If you can, just turn around and don’t look.”
Yeah, like hell…
Still, she managed not to follow as Wes hustled down the hall to where Andy and Dustin were nose to nose, ready to break both the school rules and each others’ faces.
As she watched, Wes put himself directly between them. They were too far away for her to hear his words, but she could imagine them. “What’s up, guys?” The two younger men towered over him, but Wes somehow seemed bigger.
Andy was glowering—the expression on his face a direct flashback to the street-smart thirteen-year-old he’d once been.
He just kept shaking his head as Wes talked. Finally, Dustin—who was laughing—spoke. Wes turned and gave the taller boy his full attention.
And then, all of a sudden, Wes had Dustin up against the lockers, and was talking to him with a great deal of intensity.
The new expression on Andy’s face would have been humorous if Brittany hadn’t been quite so worried at the amount of damage a full-grown Navy SEAL could inflict on a twenty-year-old idiot.
Dustin’s sly smile had vanished, replaced with a drained-of-blood look of near panic.
Finally, unable to stand it another second, Brittany started toward them.
“…so much as look at her funny, I will come and find you, do you understand?” Wes was saying as she approached.
Dustin looked at her. Andy looked at her. But Wes didn’t look away from Dustin. All that intensity aimed in one direction was alarming.
She wasn’t sure what to do, what to say. “Everything okay?” she said brightly.
“Do you understand?” Wes said again, to Dustin.
“Yes,” he managed to squeak out.
“Good,” Wes said and stepped back.
And Dustin was out of there.
“So,” Brittany said to Andy. “This is Wes Skelly.”
“Yeah,” Andy said. “I think we’re kind of past the introduction stage.”
CHAPTER TWO
REMARKABLY, BRITTANY EVANS didn’t jump down his throat.
Remarkably, she didn’t immediately demand to know what on earth would possess him to physically threaten a kid more than a dozen years his junior. Forget about the fact that he did it in front of her impressionable teenaged son.
In fact, she didn’t say anything about it at all.
Wes took that as a strong hint that he’d surely hear about it later.
But she’d merely talked about her sister’s current pregnancy and friends they had in common as they drove to a Santa Monica café, not too far from the house Brittany shared with her kid.
The questions didn’t come until they’d sat down to dinner, until they’d ordered and had started to eat.
“You surprised me back at the fiel
dhouse,” Brittany introduced the topic. The table was lit by candlelight, and it made her seem warmly, lushly exotic in a way that her little sister would never look. Not in a million years.
Wes used to think that Melody was the prettier of the Evans sisters, and maybe according to conventional standards she was. Britt’s face was slightly angular, her chin too pointed, her nose a little sharp. But catch her at the right moment, from the right angle, and she was breathtakingly beautiful.
Sex was not an option, he reminded himself. Yes, this woman was very attractive, but he wasn’t interested. Remember? He definitely had to deal with all the emotional crap rattling around inside of his own head before he went and got naked with someone who would want a real relationship rather than a happy night or two of the horizontal cha-cha.
The odds of her wanting a night of casual sex with him were pretty low to start with. She so didn’t seem to be the type. But even if he was wrong, those odds would slip down to slim-to-none after he told her the truth—that he couldn’t give her more than a night or two because he was in love with someone else. No, not just someone else. Lana Quinn. The wife of one of his best friends—U.S. Navy SEAL and Chief Petty Officer Matthew Quinn, aka Wizard, aka the Mighty Quinn, aka that lying, cheating, unfaithful sack of dog crap.
Brittany Evans was sitting across the table from Wes, gazing at him with the kind of eyes he loved best on women. Warm eyes. Intelligent eyes. Eyes that told him she liked and respected him—and expected the same respect in return.
Lana had looked at him—at all of the SEALs—like that.
“Yeah,” Wes said, since Brittany seemed to be waiting for some kind of response. “I kind of surprised myself back at the fieldhouse.” He laughed, but she didn’t join in.
She just watched him as she took a sip directly from her bottle of beer and he tried not to look at or even think about her mouth. The bottom line was that he liked her too much as a person to mess around with her as a woman, as hot as he found her. But if she were some random babe that he caught a glimpse of in a bar, he’d make a point to get closer, to see if maybe she might want some mutually superficial sex.
So, okay. He was man enough to admit it. If all things were equal, he’d throw Brittany Evans a bang. No doubt about it. Forget about Lana—because, face it, he had to. She was married, off-limits, verboten, taboo. He couldn’t have her, so he took pleasure and comfort wherever he could find it. And he kept his heart well out of it.
But things here were definitely not equal. Not even close. Brittany was Lt. Jones’s sister-in-law, which was probably even worse than if she were his sister. A sister wouldn’t tell a brother about a night of hot sex with a near stranger. Well, probably not. But a sister just might tell a sister. Provided the two sisters were close. Which Brittany and Melody certainly were.
And word would definitely get back to Jones, which wouldn’t be good.
No, this was not going to happen, not tonight, not ever. Which, on that very superficial and completely physical level, was a crying shame. He would have liked, very much, to see Brittany Evans naked.
“What did he say to you?” she asked, looking at him in that way she had—as if she was trying to see inside of his skull and read his mind. Good thing she couldn’t. “Melero, I mean.”
“That kid is a total…” Wes chose a more polite word. “Idiot.”
Brittany smiled at him. “That’s not what you were going to say.”
“I’m working hard to keep it clean.”
“I appreciate that.”
God her smile was a killer. Wes forced himself to stop cataloging everything he wasn’t going to do to her tonight. Enough self-torture already. He brought the conversation back on track. “Melero was just being a jerk. That’s another good word for him—jerk.”
“I’ve met him plenty of times before,” she countered, narrowing her eyes slightly. “I’m well aware that he’s capable of extreme jerkdom. But Andy knows that, too. What exactly did this guy say to Andy to piss him off like that?”
“It was about a girl,” Wes said, unsure just how much to tell her. “Dani?”
“Yeah, that’s the one.”
“She’s Andy’s girlfriend.”
“I gathered that,” he said.
“What did he say?” she persisted.
Wes paraphrased and summarized. He’d heard quite a bit this afternoon that he didn’t want to repeat. It really was none of his business. “Melero told Andy that he’d, uh, you know, slept with her. Only, he put it a lot less delicately.”
“I’m sure.” Britt let out an exasperated laugh. “And Andy didn’t just walk away? What a lunk-head. That girl is devoted to him—she thinks he makes the sun rise. She’s a nice kid. A little low in the self-esteem department in my opinion, but, okay, she’s still young. Maybe it’ll come. I just hope…” She shook her head. “I’m not sure she’s right for Andy and I’d really hate for her to get pregnant. I preach safe sex pretty much nonstop. He just rolls his eyes.”
“Yeah, well, you can cross that off your list of things to worry about, at least for right now.” Wes finished his beer before remembering he’d planned to make it last all through dinner. Crap. “Apparently Dani is all about taking it really slow.” Ah, hell, why not just tell Brittany all of it? It wasn’t his business, but clearly this wasn’t something Andy would bring up in a conversation with his mother. “She’s a public virgin.”
Brittany put down her fork. “Excuse me?”
“She’s a virgin, and apparently she’s not afraid to tell people—you know, make it public knowledge that she has no intention of messing around before she’s good and ready.”
“Well, you go girl! Good for her. I had no idea she had that much backbone.”
“But now Melero’s telling everyone he popped her cherry and—” Holy God, what was he saying? And to Lt. Jones’s sister-in-law, no less. “Look, he was beyond crude, okay? When I heard what he’d said, I wanted to throw him up against the wall myself.”
“You did.”
She was looking at him so pointedly, so like the way Mrs. Bartlett, his third grade teacher had looked at him, he had to laugh. Man, he hadn’t thought about Mrs. B. in years, God bless her. “Yeah,” he said, “no. I didn’t do that until he said the other thing.”
“Which was…?”
She wasn’t going to like this. “I went into caveman mode,” he apologized first. “I’m sorry I did that in front of your kid. That was the wrong message to send, but when that little cow turd started laughing and saying you were hot, and that you were next on his list…”
Brittany looked surprised for about half a second. Then she laughed. Her eyes actually sparkled. “Sweetie, that was just a schoolyard taunt. And your mother, too… You know? This boy is a total jerk and a bully, but he’s not any kind of a real threat. And even if he was, I could take care of myself. Believe me.”
“Yeah, I picked that up from you right away,” Wes said. “And I told him that.”
“After which you told him you were a Navy SEAL and if he so much as breathed in my direction, you were going to…what?”
Wes scratched his chin. “I may have mentioned something about my diving knife and his never having offspring.”
She laughed again. Thank God. “That must’ve been when he looked like he was going to faint.”
“How is everything?” The waiter was back, but the place was crowded and he didn’t wait for an answer. He deftly removed the empty beer bottles from the table. “Another?”
“Yes, please.” Brittany smiled up at the guy, and Wes said another short prayer of thanks that his knee-jerk treatment of Melero hadn’t made her decide not to like him.
“Sir?”
“Yeah. Wait! Make it a cola.”
“Very good, sir.” The waiter vanished.
“I’m trying to cut back,” Wes felt the need to explain as the warmth of her gaze was focused back on him. “One beer a night. Two becomes six a little too easily these days, you know?”
“I appreciate it,” Brittany said. “Especially since you’re driving.”
“Yeah, well, I’m a sloppy drunk. It’s not pretty. It’s definitely not a good way to make new friends.” Why the hell was he telling her this? He didn’t even talk with Bobby about his fears of becoming an alcoholic, and Bobby Taylor was his friend and swim buddy from way back. “This is a very interesting first date. We talk about your son’s sex life and my potential drinking problem. Shouldn’t we be talking about the weather? Or movies we just saw?”
“It finally stopped raining, thank goodness,” Brittany said. “I just rented Ocean’s Eleven and loved it. When did you quit smoking?”
Damn. “Two days ago. What’d I do? Pat my pocket, searching for my nonexistent pack?”
“Yup.”
Crap. He resisted another urge to reach into his pocket. Not that he could’ve had a cigarette until later. This restaurant was smoke free.
“It must be driving you crazy,” Brittany observed. “To stop smoking and cut back on your drinking all at the same time.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve tried to quit before, I don’t have a whole hell of a lot of faith in myself. I mean, the longest I’ve gone without a cigarette is six weeks.”
“Have you tried the patch?”
“No,” he admitted. “I know I probably should. I don’t know, maybe the idea would appeal to me more if I could get Julia Roberts to glue it to my ass.”
Brittany laughed. “Maybe not smoking would appeal to you more if you had a girlfriend who told you that kissing you after you smoked was similar to licking an ashtray.”
He forced a smile. “Yeah, well…” The woman he wanted to be his girlfriend was married. He didn’t want to think about the one time he did kiss her. As easy as it was to talk to Brittany, he couldn’t talk about Lana. This was a date, after all, not therapy.
Not that he’d managed to talk to the team shrink about Lana, either, though. The only talking he’d done was when he was completely skunked.
Night Watch Page 2
