Hot SEALs: Love & Lagers (Kindle Worlds Novella)

by Liz Crowe

  He had one of those blade-style prosthetics from right below his left knee. It was pretty amazing, and she wished it were polite to ask if she could see it closer. By the time she snapped back to herself, she realized the room had gone silent. She blinked and backed away from the man, still sitting at the rickety table, now staring holes into her with the biggest, most expressive pair of blue eyes she’d ever seen.

  “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” he’d said.

  “This is Owen,” Jon had said then. “You’ll be replacing him as the official FNG.”

  She smiled at Owen, figuring he’d do what most men did and freeze like a deer in the headlights for a few seconds. Instead, he frowned at her and turned back to his screens.

  “Owen is our IT expert,” Zane had said, filling the awkward silence that followed. “You know computer geeks. No accounting for them, sociability-wise.” He turned to Lainey and guided her down the hall toward a small conference room. Her ears were hot and her mind buzzing with the memory of him—the elaborate, interwoven vines inked on what she could see of his muscular arms were seared in her mind.

  It had been a damn long time since Lainey had been physically attracted to a man. The last time it happened, it was an unmitigated disaster, leading her to her current state of broke and always looking over her shoulder. She set her jaw and forced Owen’s tattoos, metal leg, and amazing eyes right out of her brain.

  Within a few somewhat perfunctory tests of her abilities with word processing, spreadsheets, and accounting software, she was officially hired. The new operations manager of the Guardian Angels Protective Services headquarters, at thirty-five thou a year with a decent medical plan.

  Her first job, she’d discovered, was the unenviable task of working with Owen to update the company’s record keeping—from database building to accounting. Since the two of them were the official computer experts in the building, it fell to them to take the paper files and convert them to electronics—all held in a super-complex encrypted cloud account that only she, Owen, and Jon had full access to.

  It had taken them about a week to set everything up, including several days spent working well past dinner. In all that close face-time, Owen hadn’t once said anything to her outside what was required for the job. He’d been just shy of surly most days, answering in grunts and other monosyllabic noises.

  Jon and Zane stuck around for three of the days, trying to explain to Owen their thought process on their early record keeping and their dream system for the company before a new assignment took them down to Florida for the rest of week, leaving her here with Mister Jerkface-Chip-On-His-Shoulder-The-Size-of-Texas.

  Lainey sighed and slumped against the new desk she’d bought on the company’s credit card—something she’d insisted they procure and that she’d be responsible for paying out of the petty cash account—recalling how she’d given her armpits and breath surreptitious sniffs more than once, certain she must have forgotten her deodorant or something equally dire.

  She’d lived with a D-cup bra size since the age of seventeen, and had the hips to match, giving her a sultry shape that she didn’t exactly discourage, given her penchant for rich, French cooking. She loved to ride her bike and did so daily, now through new-to-her parks and walks along the beach. It served to keep her waist reasonably slim. But she was no tiny girl.

  Her full lips and well-proportioned facial features had led to a few modeling jobs when she was in college—basic catalog stuff for plus sizes. It had been fine for a bit of needed extra cash. Her dream of attending the Cordon Bleu school in Paris had effectively shattered, however, when her father died, leaving her mother emotionally and financially destitute so that extra cash had gone straight to the electric bill and groceries.

  She shook her head now, unwilling to revisit the pity party in any way, shape or form. Owen Taylor was just some kind of rude, possibly borderline autistic asshole who could be gay, given his apparent immunity to her charms. End of story. She was done trying to be his friend.

  “Hey, Lainey,” Zane said as he tossed down a stack of mail and handed her his tablet so she could upload his records to her main computer. His eyes flickered down and up her frame in the way he always did. She didn’t take it personally mainly because, without fail, it was followed by something along the lines of, “Shit. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a pig. Honest to Christ. Missy is really trying to make me aware of my own male bullshit, you know?”

  “It’s all right, Zane. I tell you that every time you apologize. We’ve established that you are working on it but that not eyeballing a pretty female may be outside the realm of your impressive skill set.”

  He dropped into the extra office chair with a groan. “God, that was a crappy flight.”

  “Hmm,” she said, as she watched the encrypted GAPS cloud fill with details of their last assignment—something dangerous and involving a double agent embedded with one of the nastier drug cartels. As she observed the columns of the spreadsheets filling in, using the reporting system Owen had crafted for them that followed a combination of military and law enforcement styles, her entire screen went suddenly blank. She gaped at it, speechless. When it powered back up, seemingly without having broken stride in the cloud upload, she frowned and picked up her phone.

  Zane had his feet up on the side desk and his head back, eyes closed as she sent a text to Owen. He was in the field this week—thank the good Lord, and not moping around here glaring at her as if she’d stomped on his puppy.

  “Had a glitch in an upload,” she wrote. “Not sure what happened. Protocol?”

  When he responded ten minutes later, her heartbeat picked up at the seriousness of his words. “Take everything offline, now. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Don’t wait. And include all the tablets too.”

  She hit the big black button next to the computer keyboard and powered down Zane’s tablet before heading to Owen’s closet-slash-office to turn off the mainframe. Curious, and more than a little nervous that she’d done something wrong, she grabbed water bottles from the kitchen and brought one to Zane.

  “What’s up,” he asked after thanking her for the water. “Why’re the computers offline?”

  “Not sure, but I think we might have picked up some malware.”

  “Shit, seriously?” He drained the bottle in two long gulps and pulled his phone from his pocket. “Owen on his way? I’ll let Jon know.”

  Lainey nodded, chewing her lower lip and twirling a lock of her hair around her finger, both long-held nervous ticks as she waited for the odd, mysterious, and always-angry IT expert to crash through the front door.

  When he did, she sat and watched over his shoulder as his fingers flew across her keyboard, digging deep in the operating system to try and find the source of the glitch.

  “I knew it had to be something,” she said, resisting the urge to put her hand on his shoulder. He had on a wrinkled button-down white cotton shirt, through which she could still see the deep black ink of the vines on his shoulders and back. “I mean, it was fast, but I saw it go blank, and—”

  “You did the right thing, letting me know,” he said. Shocked at this amazing long string of words he’d used to address her with, she backed away, her knees shaky as he hunched further over the computer, studying the string of letters and numbers. He glanced over his shoulder at her, his huge blue eyes shining with intent. “Don’t get a big head or anything,” he said, treating her to a half smile before turning back to face the problem. “Has anyone other than you or Jon touched this computer in the last, say, six or seven days?” he asked, pushing back from her desk and threading his fingers together on top of his head.

  “No, absolutely not,” she said. She sipped her water and sat in the chair nearby, her gaze fixed on the screen. “But what’s that?” She pointed to an anomaly, a break in logic of the operating code that stuck out to her like a sore thumb.

  “What’s what?” He leaned forward, glaring at the screen again before he shoved himself bac
k, the rollers on the chair sending him halfway across the big open office that also served as a receptionist area. “Holy shit,” he muttered, getting up to pace around the room. She took the opportunity to screenshot the image, then she sat and watched him.

  He had on his usual military-grade cargo shorts, which hugged his ass in their usual, lovely way. Lainey forced her gaze away from that pleasant view and back to the computer screen. As she watched, the thing went blank again and stayed that way.

  “Um … Owen,” she said, timid in the face of his anger and the frustrated way he kept dragging his fingers through his thick dark hair.

  “What,” he barked at her. “I’m thinking here.”

  She pointed to the blank screen. He glanced at it. “I knew it,” he groaned, heading down the hall to his cubbyhole. “I fucking knew it.”

  She got up and followed him as curiosity and dread overwhelmed her earlier timidity. He flopped into his own chair and hit the on button for his bank of monitors. They all lit up, flickered as if they were televisions with bad rabbit ear antennas, and then all populated with a single image.

  Lainey gasped and stumbled back. A bloody, decapitated head rolled away from a body, over and over, like one of those computer-generated gif things on Facebook. But this one was so gory she had to avert her eyes. Owen got to his feet slowly, never taking his gaze off the horrible image. His hands were balled into fists on the table alongside his main keyboard. “Zane,” he barked out, startling her. “They’re back.”

  Zane came barreling out of the small gym and almost ran over her in his haste to get to Owen. He stood, breathing heavy, sweat gleaming on his handsome face. His eyes narrowed. “Not a glitch, then,” he said crossing his arms.

  “No,” Owen said. “Send me. Please.” He put his hand on Zane’s arm and then removed it quickly as if realizing he’d violated his own rule about personal space.

  “You’re too valuable here, Owen,” Zane said, as the grisly image ran in a continuous loop on the three screens.

  “But I know this asshole,” Owen said, his jaw clenched. “And now I can track him. He’s smart, but he’s not as smart as he thinks.”

  “He left a trail,” Lainey said, surprising herself. Both men turned to stare at her. “It’s in the code. It’s geo-trackable.”

  She glanced at Owen, whose gaze softened ever so slightly. Zane raised an eyebrow at her.

  “What? I took coding classes, and I was that girl who always fixed the VCR for my parents. I’m not just a pretty face.” She batted her lashes at them, but her pulse was racing.

  “Yeah, I see that,” Zane said with a chuckle. “I hear you make a mean lasagna, too.”

  “Come back to my screen,” she insisted. “I’ll show you.”

  As the men watched, she magnified the line of code in the screenshot she’d taken earlier. When she’d been in charge of the fancy tourist trap of an Orlando restaurant, she’d been computer-geek-in-chief. It had been early days of things like Yelp! and Google searches, but she’d taken full advantage of those things, which had allowed the restaurant to leap ahead of others in terms of traffic and reviews. It was all in the location services, and she recognized the simple piece of code that held the geo-tracker.

  “There,” she said, highlighting it and sending it to herself in a text message. Unwilling to meet Owen’s gaze but feeling it on her like a bright, warm beacon, she snagged it off her phone and opened Google maps, then overlaid the simple set of letters and numbers which gave her the familiar little red pin. “Here. He’s here. Whoever he is.”

  Owen snatched her phone. Zane held out his arm to stop the man from bolting out the door. “No, we do this as a team. Remember? I don’t care how successful you were as a rogue grunt in theater. GAPS is a team operation. Period. Now stand the fuck down.” He said this in a neutral tone as if discussing his latest fishing trip.

  Owen glared at his boss. Zane glared back. Owen slumped into the chair, sighed and handed her the phone back. “I memorized the address, thanks.”

  She took it. “How can we get back online? I mean, is this a vicious hack or just somebody showing off?”

  “A little of both,” Owen said. “He’s a known operator. A Russian. And he’s not at this location. I guarantee you that. But someone affiliated with him is. Someone not nearly as careful. We have to go now,” he insisted to Zane.

  “Fine. We’ll go together. I can’t get ahold of Chris, and Jon’s gone. It’ll take too long to get anyone else called in.”

  Owen grinned. The sight of that smile—something she’d never seen on his face once in their entire month of working closely together—sent a shiver down Lainey’s spine. He was drop-dead hot AF, she thought as she watched him head for the supply room with Zane. Not that Zane wasn’t, but he was taken. And Owen’s level of rugged, gruff, and inaccessible handsome was something that had always been like catnip to Lainey.

  She shook her head. No. That sort of catnip bullshit has been your excuse before and look where it’s gotten you. Stop obsessing over him. He’s just a jerk, probably has a wife—or a husband—stashed somewhere.

  He and Zane stopped at her desk, fitting ammunition into their handguns and sliding knives into various holders on their bodies. She swallowed hard. “Be … be careful,” she said, looking at Owen.

  He glanced up at her, a surprised expression on his cut-marble face. Then he blinked slowly as if processing the specific layout of her face for the very first time. She leaned back in her chair, a chill shooting down her spine under his intense scrutiny. Their eyes locked for a few, somewhat clichéd, seconds before Zane smacked his shoulder. “Let’s go, Owen. Before your Russian figures out his local peon has compromised their location.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Owen said, still staring at her face, then her neck, her chest, her waist, and her legs. She crossed her legs and waited.

  This, she understood. It didn’t make her happy, but once men got past this stage with her, she could usually convert them to friends, or fans of her cooking, or something else—something she had once and was now running from as fast as she possibly could.

  “Dude,” Zane said, sticking a gun into a shoulder holster before shrugging into his leather jacket. “You’re a little late to that party.” He glanced over at Lainey, his eyes soft and apologetic. “Come on.”

  Lainey leaned her head to one side, enjoying the full frontal view of Owen Taylor, taking him in the same way he was drinking her up like a frosty mug of beer on a ninety-degree day. “They’re hops, aren’t they?” she asked, softly, loving the way his face seemed to resume some of his animation.

  “Uh, what?”

  Zane rolled his eyes. “Bad guys, Owen, remember?”

  “Hop vines and flowers. That’s what’s on your skin … your tattoo.” She smiled at him.

  He smiled back, and a slow, smoldering ember of lust flashed to life in her core, making her gulp and look away from him. She had no business, none whatsoever, thinking any of the sexy thoughts she was thinking right now about the man standing in front of her.

  “Yeah,” he said, blinking fast as if emerging from a dark cave into the light. “Yes, I am … I was a brewer.”

  “Nice,” she said, crossing her arms and noting clinically how the gazes of both men zeroed in on her tits, even though they were covered by a modest, button-up, professional blouse. Zane cursed under his breath.

  “Sorry, Lainey,” he said, as he grabbed Owen’s arm and started dragging the man out the door.

  “Be careful,” she repeated, standing up as her pulse and heartbeat synced up, pounding, and racing fast, making her slightly dizzy. Or perhaps that was the lust that coiled in her gut, slithered up her spine, and hit her brain so hard she, too, had to blink fast as Zane and Owen jumped into Zane’s big, gray truck and scratched out onto the street.

  Chapter Six

  Lainey sat at her desk, frozen in place for nearly thirty minutes until she realized that she either had to get moving or she’d lose her mind worrying.
Worrying about Owen, she admitted to herself, as her face flushed with the memory of his eyes on her.

  Since she couldn’t do a damn thing on the computers until he got back and cleared the malware off the system, she decided to tackle the various supply rooms. Within two hours, both the general supplies—office stuff, along with bathroom supplies and other various boxes of crap—and the “assignment supplies” used by the men that were kept under triple lock and key, were organized within an inch of their lives.

  Lainey’s nervous energy had only ramped up, so she spent another hour cleaning the conference room, hanging some of the pictures she’d bought to soften the hard, strip mall-style edges but hadn’t had time to put up yet. She even rearranged the room so that the large table was situated in a more pleasant way relative to the windows.

  She surveyed her Feng Shui handiwork then checked her phone for what felt like the zillionth time. Jon had sent a text, telling her his plane was landing, and he’d be there in an hour, and would she mind ordering Chinese because he hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

  She went to the fridge—a big one she’d bought on sale along with the second-hand commercial-grade range—and pulled out the container of homemade pizza dough she’d made the day before in her miniscule, crappy apartment kitchen. Figuring she might as well relax, she stuck her phone in the speaker and dialed in her favorite oldies rock station. After setting the oven to four hundred, she spent ten minutes slowly kneading the dough back to room temperature, dusting it with flour and smiling as the activity soothed her rattled nerves.

  Twenty minutes later, she had onions and mushrooms caramelized in a skillet on one of the big gas burners and had stretched the dough onto two pizza stones. She opened a jar of her secret recipe pizza sauce and covered one rectangle of dough, then used homemade pesto sauce on the other. Once the onions and mushrooms were ready, she pulled a container of grilled chicken from the fridge and arranged it, along with the ’shrooms and onions on the pesto sauce.