Hot SEALs: Love & Lagers (Kindle Worlds Novella)

by Liz Crowe

  She cut paper-thin slices of prosciutto and placed those, along with some store-bought sun-dried tomatoes, on the red sauce. Between checking her phone for word from someone, anyone, she dotted the pesto pizza with goat cheese and used buffalo mozz on the other. As she slid both stones into the massive oven, her phone beeped with an actual call.

  Forcing herself to retain the calmness the cooking binge had engendered, she plucked up her phone and put it to her ear. “Zane? You guys all right?” Her knees were shaking so she dropped into one of the chairs at the small table. The men had indulged her with the kitchen thing, once she’d explained she was actually a hyper-organized, under-employed professional chef and would feed whichever of them was around at least twice a week. But she’d stretched the limits of the space with the commercial-grade appliances.

  “Yeah, we’re at the hospital.”

  “Why?” she squeaked, standing up and getting so dizzy she had to sit right back down. “I mean, is everyone all right?” She had the potholder clenched tight in one fist. She released it slowly, exhaling as she waited for the reply.

  “Owen took a bullet to his shoulder. Went all the way through. He’s fine.”

  “Oh, thank God,” she sighed, closing her eyes.

  “Yeah, so your tip was spot on, Lainey. Nice work.”

  “Great,” she said, putting her hand to her burning hot forehead. “Glad to hear it. So … it’s just that? Nothing more? He’s … you guys … are all right otherwise?”

  Zane chuckled. Lainey frowned. She’d sworn off guys a while ago, given her experience with the compelling, silent jerk-type. This was simply ridiculous. She had to get a grip.

  “I cooked,” she said.

  “Well, it’s about time. I was beginning to think that fancy kitchen was gonna go begging.”

  “Well, it’s not. Bring some beer or something.”

  “You got it, pretty lady.”

  There was an awkward silence. Zane cleared his throat. “I mean, yes, ma’am. I’ll bring beer and thank you for making dinner. You didn’t have to. It’s not in your job description anywhere.”

  “I know that. I like doing it, and you guys humored me since my apartment kitchen is so small and lame. Just … oh, never mind. I’ll see you soon. Jon should be—”

  “He’s here with Owen and the docs right now.”

  “Oh?” Lainey attempted to keep the overt worry out of her voice.

  “Yeah, Owen didn’t want any local anesthetic when they were stitching him up. Was sort of flipping out over it. But he’s fine now.”

  “Good. Great. I’ll see you soon.” She ended the call and pressed her forehead to the table, shoving aside the inappropriate concern over a man who’d been nothing but a cold jerk to her for a month.

  The next hour, they were all seated at the newly positioned conference room table with the two pizza stones empty in front of them, a six-pack and a half of locally brewed beer empty. Lainey couldn’t take her eyes off Owen, who sat silently except when he complimented the pizza and made random comments about the beer. His arm was in a sling, and he had a huge bruise on one cheek.

  “You should see the other guy,” he said at one point, his voice soft, his comment meant just for her. At least in her suddenly vivid imagination.

  “You are a killer find, Lainey,” Jon said, pulling a bourbon bottle from the table drawer. “This calls for a real toast.”

  She grinned as Zane set out four plastic cups and sloshed healthy portions into each of them. Not willing to meet Owen’s gaze, she held up her cup and listened as the men touted her many attributes—her organizational skills, her ability to read through all their bullshit, the way she was able to withstand their more relentless attempts at flirtation.

  “But most of all,” Zane said, flashing what she realized was the sort of smile many women would simply die for. “She makes killer pizzas!”

  “Hear, hear,” Jon said, his words slightly slurred around the edges. “Okay, I’m gonna go over there to that couch and pass out. No one drives out of here tonight, got me?”

  “You forgot one thing,” Owen said softly, holding his red Solo cup half-full of brown liquor without drinking it. His deep blue gaze was fixed on her. Lainey’s face got so hot she knew it must be flaming red. She glared back at him.

  “Nope, I didn’t,” Zane declared as he flopped back into a chair and pulled his phone from his pocket.

  “You did. You forgot how unbelievably gorgeous she is.”

  Zane looked up from his perusal of his phone’s screen and frowned at Owen, and then he looked at Lainey as if puzzled by this comment. Before he could reply, Lainey slammed back the bourbon, poured herself another helping, and stood up. Her mind was racing from Owen’s words and her body had lurched into a sort of high alert.

  “That sort of comment can get you slapped with a sexual harassment suit, mister,” she quipped, trying to keep it light as she started collecting the paper plates, napkins.

  “I’ll help,” Owen offered.

  Zane shot him a smirk and then yawned so wide Lainey thought she could hear his jaw cracking. “Jesus, please-us, what a day.” He smiled at something on his phone. “Excuse me. I have some sexting to do.”

  Lainey rolled her eyes but let Owen take the two baking stones from her hands. She walked over to the couch and put Jon’s legs up on it. He flinched, then rolled over onto his side and resumed snoring. By the time she’d collected the cups and the rest of the stuff from their dinner, Owen was already back in the small kitchen, wiping down the ceramic stones with a soft cloth.

  She hesitated, watching his shoulders and back—and ass—for a few seconds while marveling that he understood not to put the things under running water or, even worse, use dish soap on them. He placed them carefully beside the sink and turned to face her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by that, you know. Other than the truth of it.” He shrugged and ran a hand around the back of his neck.

  “No offense taken. I should thank you for the compliment.”

  “You’re sort of intimidating. Do you even realize that?” He held out his hands. She placed the rest of the garbage in them since the room was not really meant to hold more than one person at a time. He tossed them into the trash, then tugged the bag out of it and tied it off while Lainey attempted to find an answer to his odd question.

  “Huh, hardly,” she said, leaning in the doorway. “But that explains why you’ve been so, um …”

  “So much of a jerk?” His smile was wide and genuine, and it came close to melting her fillings.

  The damn man was too much. She needed to go home.

  She turned, but the booze sloshed around in her system, and the hallway did an alarming three-sixty. Even as she reached for the wall, it seemed to warp away from her. Alarmed and embarrassed, she sensed herself falling even as she tried to absent herself from the whole scene. Owen Taylor, the hot guy with the sour puss face with whom she’d worked for six weeks but barely knew, was actually talking with her—flirting, probably. And she was about to pass out drunk.

  “Oh, shit,” she said, covering her eyes and willing the hallway to stop spinning. Someone grabbed her elbow. She leaned into that someone’s warm torso even as hot tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m not really a cry baby.” But the sensation of being held up by a man, even in her drunken state, had caused her well-built wall of emotional protection to come crashing down.

  “It’s all right,” Owen said, his lips close to her ear. “I’ve got you.”

  “I don’t need …” she said, shoving him away in one last ditch attempt to keep from doing something stupid. “Oh …,” she managed to squeak out before nausea slammed into her like a tidal wave. She raced for the bathroom, barely making it before losing the booze and most of the pizza she’d consumed.

  Sitting on the cold tile floor with her arms propped on her bent knees, she groaned when she saw Owen’s boot and prosthetic foot appear under the stall door. “I’m sorry. Just go on home
and leave me here. I’ll crash … somewhere.”

  “Nope,” he said, giving the stall door a brisk tug, which caused the weak lock to give way. “Those guys have claimed all the useable sleeping surfaces. I’m taking you home.”

  He pulled her up and guided her to the sinks. “Brush your teeth,” he said, reaching into the drawer where she kept the necessary supplies. “I’ll wait outside.”

  She nodded, miserable and horrified at her behavior, but she brushed, rinsed and spit, then made her wobbly way back to the hallway. Owen was leaning against the wall. When she emerged, he smiled and held out his good elbow. “This work? Or should I carry you?”

  “God, no,” she said, even though the thought of that made her even more wobbly. “I’m good. I can walk. Why don’t you just call me an Uber or something?”

  “Now what kind of a sober knight in shining armor would I be if I just stuck you in some stranger’s car?”

  “I don’t require a knight in shining armor, thanks much,” she said, and then burped, which made Owen burst out laughing. She frowned at him. “Jesus. I’m really impressive.”

  “You are, actually. Now, let’s go. I just need your address.”

  She sighed, stared at his outstretched elbow for another second, and then tucked her hand into it. “My apartment is a dumpy basement that smells like cat pee and mildew, fair warning.”

  “What a coincidence. I love cats and mold.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” she said as he handed her up into the passenger’s side of his Jeep. “What’s with the attention all of a sudden? I mean, you’ve barely given me a second glance for over a month.”

  Owen hesitated before shutting her door, shifting his sling with a wince. “I think I was trying not to really look at you. I had a sort of shitty experience with a girl—a woman, I mean—before I got here. I was gonna swear off chicks—women, sorry—for a while. So I refused to look at you, because …” He leaned down close to her face, too damn close. She pressed her lips together as if that would ward off any advances. “Because I knew if I did, I’d like what I saw. And I do.” He poked her nose with the finger of his good hand, smiled, and shut her door.

  Chapter Seven

  Owen drove slowly along the ocean road, using his good hand and trying to ignore the deep, toothache-like pain in his injured shoulder. An awkward silence had fallen since he’d gotten Lainey’s address, broken only by her soft hiccups. He glanced at her as they waited for a light to turn. She was leaning against the window, her thick, honey-blonde hair covering the left side of her face.

  Without realizing he was doing it, he let his gaze flicker down her body. The light blue, business-casual blouse gaped just enough, given her sprawled state, to allow him a killer view of her boobs. Which were impressive. But Owen was an ass and legs man, and this girl had those things in spades. He sighed as he drank her in, and his good hand gripped the steering tighter as he imagined running his palms up her calves to her thighs, to her hips, and around to her full, tight, perky ass.

  “Take a picture, it’ll last longer,” she muttered, sweeping that thick fall of hair back and clipping it at the crown of her head. “Pig.”

  “I stand accused,” he admitted as he waved to the guy who’d given him a warning honk and gunned the Jeep through the intersection. Somehow, the moment that should have been awkward wasn’t.

  He’d spent the last two months getting comfortable in his new life. The nice apartment with the beach view he could afford, thanks to the jaw-dropping salary the GAPS guys had agreed to pay him. The new wheels. The way he felt at home among the former and current military guys who peopled his new workplace. And, of course, his closest workmate, the super-competent Lainey.

  The girl whose physical attributes were bandied around the gym and the men’s room outside of her hearing with regularity. So much so, Owen had steeled himself against them, all of them, so they could work well together.

  Hot As Fuck.

  Brick Shithouse.

  An ass you could bounce a quarter off.

  A rack that would put Victoria’s Secret out of business.

  Cupid’s bow mouth that would look even better wrapped around my dick.

  He’d refused to acknowledge any of it, or the fact that the more he heard it the more it pissed him off. But he’d also refused to take a real look at her. On purpose. That bitch Hannah had done a serious number on his psyche. That much was a hard truth. He didn’t trust himself not to lash out at the first woman he could get his hands on.

  A strange sort of protectiveness about Lainey had reared up in his psyche, shocking him into silence in the face of the sort of shitty, misogonistic, locker-room talk he’d participated in plenty in his younger days. But today, he’d seen her. Really, truly taken in her unbelievable, physical magnificence and it had rendered him damn near useless. Probably why he’d gotten pegged in the fucking shoulder by the stupid computer nerd who’d turned on his big boss man within seconds.

  The last hour or so he’d spent observing her, eating and drinking and laughing and being so utterly perfect had pushed him to act, finally. He smiled to himself, hoping he’d done the right thing, for both of their sakes.

  He made the turns she indicated and pulled up at a two-story house with five cars parked in the drive, a couple of dudes lolling on the front porch, and a mangy dog tied to a tree. Frowning, he turned to her, but she was already opening her door.

  “Wait,” he said, putting a hand on her thigh. The heat of her skin baked through the fabric of her jeans and made him jerk away from her as if she’d lit him on fire. “I mean, hold on a second.”

  She hiccupped and looked even more miserable than she had before, which did nothing to dispel the fact of her jaw-dropping beauty. Owen licked his lips, got out, and walked around to her side of the car. Ignoring the blatant stares of the assholes on the porch, he planted a hand on the small of her back and guided her through the broken gate, up the cracked sidewalk, and to the front door.

  “Nice hardware,” one of the d-bags said. “Didn’t know it was Halloween already.”

  Owen tightened his grip on Lainey’s elbow as she fumbled with her keys. “Door’s open, hot stuff,” one of the other guys quipped as he tossed an empty beer can down on the porch floor with a loud clank. She sighed and opened it, then turned to face him.

  Owen felt every hackle he possessed rising at the thought of leaving her here, in her current state, at the mercy of these losers. “Let’s go,” he said, pulling the door shut behind her and taking her arm again. “You are not staying here.”

  “Let go of me,” she insisted, shaking him off. “I don’t need your damn help.”

  “Yeah, G.I. Gimp,” the peanut gallery chimed in. “You heard our little hottie. Beat it and take your PTSD with ya.”

  He could hear them slapping high fives over the roaring sound that was rising in his ears. “You’re not staying here, Lainey. Not tonight.” He could feel the tension rising off his skin, permeating the air between them. She crossed her arms over her lovely chest and glared at him.

  “I’m fine. I just need to sleep it off.”

  “Oh, baby, I thought you promised me a date,” one of the drunks said, before making sloppy kissing noises. “I like my dates good and loaded.”

  Lainey rolled her eyes. “They’re all talk, trust me.”

  “See, that’s the thing. I don’t. Let’s go.” He took her by the elbow and frog marched her back to his Jeep. She made a few splutters of protest, but he could tell she was fading. Her big blue eyes were half closed, and her words slurred. The hiccups returned with a vengeance.

  By the time he’d parked in front of his much nicer and more expensive living space, she was asleep. And snoring, which made him smile.

  Never in his life would Owen be mistaken for a nice guy. His sexual history was littered with one-night stands, one-offs, and quickies. Granted, he’d been taught well and always honored the ‘no means no’ rule. But as he glanced over at the lovely, c
ompetent, funny woman snoozing away in his passenger’s seat, he was reminded of a few times in his early days of female conquest that he’d done things he wasn’t proud of to girls in a similar state as Lainey was in right now.

  No, he wasn’t a bad guy or some kind of a date rapist. On the flip side, he’d never allowed himself to get emotionally attached to any one of his girlfriends-of-the-moments, either. It didn’t take a damn Ph.D. in psychology to figure out that he was protecting himself thanks to the people he’d loved as a little boy, who had abandoned him, emotionally and practically, and had left him to fend for himself in a filthy mobile home.

  He was almost nine years old when his mother had gotten hooked on hillbilly heroin after Owen’s father left town, ostensibly to find work, but really, to be shed of his husband and father responsibilities. He’d managed on his own, more or less, for an entire year before Lindsay Love, accompanied by her husband, Anton, swooped in and took him out of the roach-infested box on wheels that passed for his home.

  She’d plunked him down in the middle of her brood for a solid week before his own mother figured out he was gone.

  Owen shook his head. Dwelling on past crappiness did nothing but piss him off and make him want to drink and hit things. At that moment, Lainey let out a combined snore-snort, mumbled something, and tried to roll over. When her nose connected with the window, she yelped and sat up. “Holy … I mean … wow. I’m, um … drunk.”

  “Ya think?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

  She shot him a dirty look, which lost some of its effect given the unfocused nature of her gaze. “You aren’t some kind of a creep, are you?” She poked his biceps with her finger. “I mean, seriously. You’re kind of kidnapping the drunk girl right now. That can’t be for any kind of a good reason. For the girl, I mean.” She hiccupped twice, then slapped her hand over her mouth and closed her eyes with a moan.

  “Hang on one second,” he said as he jumped down and ran around to open her door before she blew chunks all over the inside of his nice new ride. But she just sat with her hands on the dash in front of her, as if bracing herself from puking. She shook her head when he tried to take her arm. He gave her a solid sixty seconds to get a hold of herself. When he brushed a thick lock of her hair back from her face, he saw tears streaming down her face.